PowerPivot for SharePoint
Microsoft SQL Server PowerPivot for SharePoint extends SharePoint 2010 and Excel Services to add server-side processing, collaboration, and document management support for the PowerPivot workbooks that you publish to SharePoint.
PowerPivot workbooks are Excel workbook (.xslx) files that contain large, related datasets that you build in a separate PowerPivot window in Excel, and use with PivotTables and PivotCharts in a worksheet. The window is provided through the PowerPivot for Excel add-in that you download from the web. You use the window to import large or small amounts of data from a wide range of external data sources, including corporate relational or multidimensional databases, public data feeds, Reporting Services reports, or Office documents. After you import the data, you can build relationships between disparate data so that you can work with the data as a whole. In addition to the separate work area, the add-in also provides a local data processor that performs rapid calculations on large amounts of compressed data. Datasets that you import into the PowerPivot window can exceed the one million row limit in Excel worksheets as long as the overall file size does not exceed 2GB.
Collaboration and document management is supported on the SharePoint 2010 platform when you add PowerPivot for SharePoint to your topology. After you create a PowerPivot workbook, you can save it to SharePoint. PowerPivot server components provide server-side query processing of PowerPivot data in Excel workbooks that you access from SharePoint sites.
Together, the PowerPivot client add-in and server components provide an end-to-end solution that furthers business intelligence data analysis for Excel users on the workstation and on SharePoint sites.
To get started with a new server installation, see Install PowerPivot for SharePoint on a New SharePoint Server.