PivotViewer Extension for Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services

Microsoft has released last year (2010) a new Silverlight control called PivotViewer. This new control helps us to make better use of the growing amounts of information around us by visualizing thousands of things at once in a way that reveals the relationships which connect them. At the heart of the PivotViewer control are “Collections”. They combine large groups of similar items, so we can begin viewing the relationships between individual pieces of information in a new way. By visualizing hidden patterns, PivotViewer enables users to discover and act on new insights.

Part of the BI Labs, I have prototyped a new concept that couples the PivotViewer control with a utility that uses Reporting Services to automatically generate this type of collections. We showcased this concept at the BI conference in New Orleans 2010 with overwhelming support and interest from our community of BI enthusiasts and are making this demo available here to those that would like to evaluate it in their own sandbox environments. The project is already at CTP2 milestone, used by thousands of people, many corporations using it in a production environment. We also use it within Microsoft (e.g. Xbox, Microsoft Finance etc).

Please visit the BI Labs page of the project - it contains presentation and tutorial videos and a link from which you can download the bits (which also contain a detailed documentation and sample data). The initial blog of the project (where you can find more information about the project) is here.

Please let me know what you think!