Excel and Project Gemini
Project Gemini is due to be released with the 2010 version of Excel as a free add-on. The two videos below are a little dry and hard to see. But there are a few things that caught my attention very quickly. Also, Mr.Excel did a podcast on this a little while back in episode #975. The things I liked were:
- Ability to slice and dice using 20 million rows of data on a fairly basic PC (not server)
- The other was how quickly you can filter on 20 million rows
- Create Pivot tables quickly with 20 million rows and on the fly
- It’s free and will be included in Excel 2010
Here is another demo using Gemini and SharePoint.
[thanks to SmartData Collective]
What do you think? Do you think this is a huge breakthrough or just Microsoft/Excel getting with the times?
Most Commented Posts
May 7th, 2009 at 6:26 am
I wish they would learn to make effective videos. These are out of focus, the text is too small, you can’t see what’s going on. After about 30 seconds I lose interest and click away.
May 7th, 2009 at 4:29 pm
I would say overall, “getting with the times”, a positive move in the right direction, nonetheless.
I don’t see anything really groundbreaking that I have not seen in other BI tools, other than they are bringing BI to the masses with a steep learning curve.
I see the target audience as knowledgeable BI people who do not want a specialized BI application.
I would be most interesting in hearing more about their data cleaning tools.
May 12th, 2009 at 6:21 pm
I agree with @Joe Mako, “getting with the times”. From what I have seen, if my company upgrades to Excel 2010 I will use it but as of now, I would prefer Tableau Software. That, of course, can change between now and release. I just like more competition out there so us end users get some really great tools.
My final thoughts are this:
- Javelin Software (“Some parts of Javelin’s approach were later used by other products such as Lotus’s Improv and Quantrix Modeler. Lotus essentially copied two of Javelin’s features (named data arrays and pivot tables) onto a NeXTSTEP-based and later Windows-based GUI to create Improv.[citation needed] Since Improv was not based on 1980s MS-DOS technology, it suffered less memory-based limitations than Javelin.” From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Javelin_Software
- Lotus Improv (“But the real power of Improv did not become clear until work had already started on the project. With the grouping system you could collect monthly sales into groups like “1995″ and “1996″, and call the category “years”. Then the unit prices could be grouped in terms of the product type, say “clothing” and “food”. Now by dragging these groups around (represented by small tabs) the view may be quickly changed. This concept has been implemented in the form of pivot tables in Microsoft Excel.” – From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotus_Improv
- Quantrix – Click for white paper http://tinyurl.com/qrrx2u
@dmgerbino
May 29th, 2009 at 3:00 pm
Actually Tableau has been doing this for years and much better too. Once you’ve worked with Tableau, Excel Pivot Tables are quite primitive.
June 1st, 2009 at 5:13 pm
I agree with Jon Peltier. What an awful video.
As a BI Architect, I’ve been on a love-hate relationship with Excel as a BI client. I love SSAS, but using it with Excel and Sharepoint falls short. I wish Microsoft would just purchase Tableau Software and start taking over the BI world with that potent combination of OLAP and a true BI front end. Using Excel 2007 + Sharepoint MOSS BI is so convoluted, I’m just thinking that when Sharepoint 14 + Excel 2010 releases it will be Microsoft hell times two. I swear if I have to set up another Kerberos authentication or Sharepoint Central Admin configuration of data connection trusts, I will want the mythic Kerberos dog to end my misery. Excel BI engineers need to spend a few years in Stephen Few and Edward Tufte schools so they’ll know what real useful practical visual analytics are from eye-candy bullshit that they keep engineering. My bet is that the MS marketing dept wants to cross-sell Sharepoint and therefore hinder the real creativity behind the Excel R&D teams.
June 2nd, 2009 at 10:16 am
@Jon – I agree the videos are pretty poor.
@Joe – My thoughts too about getting with the times. I was also interested in the data cleaning tools that were mentioned.
@David – thanks for sharing that white paper, which is very interesting. They spell out the gap perfectly.
@Eckhardtk & Jano – Welcome to the blog and I appreciate you taking the time to leave a thoughtful comment!
@Eckhardtk – Yeah, products like Tableau and Spot Fire are much better than Excel pivots.
@Jano – I hope Microsoft doesn’t purchase Tableau. I think Tableau is doing a great job and really making a name/footprint in the Data Analysis/Visualization marketplace. You make a good point that I have been thinking about for some time. Why don’t the Excel developers get with folks like, Jon Peltier, Bill Jelen, Stephen Few, Edward Tufte, etc. and really try to understand what works, what doesn’t and the best practices in data visualization and analyses. If you get a chance, check out Stephen’s new book, which is better than any I have found to date on Data Analysis.
Thank you all for the comments!
June 2nd, 2009 at 12:45 pm
Jano -
If MS purchased Tableau, I would hope they would keep their hands off of it and let the smart Tableau people keep developing it. Otherwise we’ll get stuck with another Dundas.
Tony -
“Why don’t the Excel developers get with folks like…”
Read Excel’s New Charting Engine — Preview of an Opportunity Missed, Steven Few’s article about planning for Office 2007. He approached Microsoft, they said thanks, but we have plans, and out came the debacle which is Excel 2007 (which I keep discovering is still in beta).
June 3rd, 2009 at 5:45 am
I saw a similar Gemini demo by Microsoft’s Donald Farmer at Microsoft in March and it was an impressive product. Gemini could infer a star schema when you chose fields from two data sets on two different worksheets. If this works well, you have now extended data analysis tools to people who can not spell VLOOKUP or pull off a join in Access. While the data set in the video had 20 million records, that is not the upper limit – by March they were scrolling/filtering/sorting data sets much larger.
Gemini will be free with Excel 2010. It was not developed by the Excel team. I can’t wait to get a beta copy and really try it out.
June 3rd, 2009 at 10:50 am
Jon – I like the beta comment. I use both Excel versions, but lean more towards 2003 for everyday work. I would think that feedback in this market would be key. Plus you have one of the best in the business offering up their service, just to ignore them. That’s just either arrogance or ignorance.
Bill – Thanks for stopping by. I love the daily podcasts. You reiterate a good point in that this will be a free add-on to Excel 2010. It’s difficult to compare a free add-on to a product like Tableau that costs $1000 for the desktop version. For casual data analysis folks, they probably don’t want to spend the money for a high-end product. Also, if we’re talking about a company, the manager or executive may not want to fork over $1000 per license for Tableau when they already have Excel as the company-wide standard. It’s like comparing a Honda Accord to a Ferrari, both will get the job done; one may just do it a little better or faster with a much steeper cost.
I look forward to hearing about your test drive of the beta. Thanks again!
June 3rd, 2009 at 1:59 pm
Tony -
My blog post today is about another flaw in 2007 (Connect Two XY Series with Arrows – 2007 Error). Today I came up with several inconsistencies in 2007, at least one of which is a real flaw:
Workbooks.Open “C:\Path\Template.xlt”
- opens the template file, just like in historical versions of Excel
Workbooks.Open “C:\Path\Template.xltm”
- creates a new workbook based on the template, which we already can do using Workbooks.Add “C:\Path\Template.xltm”. So how do I open a template file for editing?