Chapter 7: Data Cubes and Pivot Tables
In the "Data Browsing" section of the web site, there is an
explanation of how to manipulate the Excel pivot tables embedded in the web
site. If you want to be able to connect directly from Excel on your desktop
and build your own pivot tables, then you will need the following
instructions. Excel pivot tables can directly connect to the cube using
Excel 2003 and Excel 2007 on Windows. (Office 2004 for the Mac is not able
to connect.) THe easiest way to make the connection is to download one of
the pivot tables available in the documents list of the Data Browsing
section. In the Pivot Tables folder, the excel files with names that end in
either 2003 or 2007 can be downloaded and reconfigured in your local Excel.
If you are using Excel 2003, before it will work you will need to install
two modules and Microsoft Query. The instructions for adding the necessary
components to Excel 2003 and for configuring the pivot table can be found
here. The instructions for doing the same in Excel
2007 can be found
here.
In order to enable improved navigation in the data cubes, the
original column headings of the data have been broken up into dimensions
called Datumtype, Offset, and Exdatumtype. An explanation of how this was
done and tables giving the exact translation can be found
here.