AtScale Expands Semantic Layer Solution for Microsoft Excel
AtScale expands integrations with Microsoft Excel enabling high-performance, multi-dimensional analysis on live cloud data.
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AtScale, a leading provider of semantic layer solutions for modern BI and data science teams, today announced deeper integration with Microsoft Excel’s advanced analytics functions, making it possible to connect Excel workbooks to live cloud data platforms, including Snowflake, AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, and Databricks. Excel users can work with billions of rows of data without needing to extract or move data. Leveraging native MDX integration, the semantic layer is fully accessible from Excel PivotTables, slicers, and cell definitions. New support includes the ability to work with cell-level CUBE functions for embedding dimensional queries directly in cell formulas.
Key capabilities of the integration with Excel include:
- Native connection: An MDX-based connector lets Excel users access models and data through a semantic layer with no additional drivers or client-side software. Data consumers are shielded from the complexity of raw data structures and cloud access with a business-oriented dimensional model, discoverable through Excel PivotTables and CUBE functions.
- High-performance access to live cloud data: Data requests through the semantic layer are directed in real time to underlying cloud data platforms, with no need for extracts or pre-processing of data. Leveraging AI-assisted data orchestration, the semantic layer optimizes query performance while minimizing cloud resource consumption.
- Analytics governance and security: Excel’s single sign-on is supported with Active Directory/LDAP integration to manage access control and ensure overall data security.
- Automatic data refresh: Excel’s automatic data refresh is also supported to avoid stale data and the need to manually copy and paste raw data.
AtScale lets enterprise data and analytics teams scale their operations and pursue a self-service data culture. With Excel being the ultimate self-service analytics tool, this new semantic layer provides a level of control and governance that lets analysts confidently interact with data. It also forms a consistent set of enterprise metrics and analysis dimensions, accessible from common BI tools, including Tableau and Power BI, as well as from data science tools including AutoML platforms and Python Notebooks. The ability to centrally maintain a governed set of metrics reduces manual data prep time, eliminates inconsistencies across reports, and enables reusability of models.
More information is available at www.atscale.com.