Comments on: When is a refresh not a refresh? http://powerpivotgeek.com/2009/11/15/when-is-a-refresh-not-a-refresh/ An adventure in managed self-service computing Wed, 28 Jul 2010 19:14:39 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 hourly 1 By: powerpivotgeek http://powerpivotgeek.com/2009/11/15/when-is-a-refresh-not-a-refresh/comment-page-1/#comment-587 powerpivotgeek Wed, 10 Mar 2010 06:11:25 +0000 http://powerpivotgeek.com/?p=190#comment-587 Great question Ernest. When in Excel Services, if you "refresh the connection" then you are telling Excel Services to go to the PowerPivot SSAS instance and refresh Excel Services view of the embedded data in the workbook. Since the embedded data is a copy of the information pulled into the workbook when the data is imported, this means that you aren't really reaching out to the original data sources, instead you are refreshing the pivot cache inside Excel Services. Normally the data hasn't changed, so there is no real effect. Clicking on a slicer requeries the data but since Excel Services hasn't likely already read the data for that slice, it does change both the workbook data rendered and the pivot cache. To actually refresh the embedded database that lives inside the workbook, you have to use the PowerPivot Data Refresh facility. In that case, we do actually reach out to all of the original data sources (although you can control which source will be used for a given schedule) and we do re-write the actual workbook in SharePoint (a new file is created with update data). Hope that helps. Great question Ernest.
When in Excel Services, if you “refresh the connection” then you are telling Excel Services to go to the PowerPivot SSAS instance and refresh Excel Services view of the embedded data in the workbook. Since the embedded data is a copy of the information pulled into the workbook when the data is imported, this means that you aren’t really reaching out to the original data sources, instead you are refreshing the pivot cache inside Excel Services. Normally the data hasn’t changed, so there is no real effect. Clicking on a slicer requeries the data but since Excel Services hasn’t likely already read the data for that slice, it does change both the workbook data rendered and the pivot cache.

To actually refresh the embedded database that lives inside the workbook, you have to use the PowerPivot Data Refresh facility. In that case, we do actually reach out to all of the original data sources (although you can control which source will be used for a given schedule) and we do re-write the actual workbook in SharePoint (a new file is created with update data).

Hope that helps.

]]> By: Ernest Ostrander http://powerpivotgeek.com/2009/11/15/when-is-a-refresh-not-a-refresh/comment-page-1/#comment-580 Ernest Ostrander Tue, 09 Mar 2010 17:57:01 +0000 http://powerpivotgeek.com/?p=190#comment-580 Excellent article. I'm cross-referencing other sources, and in this article, http://powerpivotgeek.com/2009/12/11/excel-services-delegation/, it states that clicking on a slicer refreshes the data. How does that relate to the refresh processing in this article? I feel led to believe that merely clicking on a slicer is sufficient to refresh data from the source. Keep up the posts. I'm reading all I can find on PowerPivot! Excellent article. I’m cross-referencing other sources, and in this article, http://powerpivotgeek.com/2009/12/11/excel-services-delegation/, it states that clicking on a slicer refreshes the data. How does that relate to the refresh processing in this article? I feel led to believe that merely clicking on a slicer is sufficient to refresh data from the source.

Keep up the posts. I’m reading all I can find on PowerPivot!

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