Jenn Lin

Hello everyone! I am still tracking down the location of the SQL announcement, but I have some other thoughts to share. Great questions, you all really seem to grok what Silverlight PivotViewer is all about.

Q: How many items before it is unusable?

A: We recommend keeping a slice of a collection to just 3000 items. You may choose to have a dynamic server backing the collection that determines how to slice it to get the optimal list. An example of this is the wikipedia collection. Or you may want to have a series of linked collections that link together based on a common atrribute, like actors in a movie. That would be like our AMG movies collection. But if you want to optimize performance of items in the control at one time, three thousand is a good number.

Q: Can I use a different layout to view items?

A: No, we do not yet support those layouts, but they sound like great ideas!

Q: Are there better tools?

A: The Live Labs team released two new tools with this launch. One is an open source version of our command line tool, so that you can use the code in your custom workflow. The other is a Just in Time dynamic collection builder that serves data on the fly. They can both be found at our developers' page: http://getpivot.com/developer-info/tools.aspx

Q: Plans for a WPF Pivot viewer?

A: We do not have any short term plans for a WPF control, but there has been enough demand to make the team think hard about what it would take.

Q: How could I structure photo albums from a biannual event?

A: All three strucutres have different advantages and disadvantages. Since the PivotViewer is hosted in a webpage, you could provide links to specific collections that just contain all photos from one event (simple). Or, you could have a hierarchy where one collection shows one event as one item, and then when you open that item the viewer would launch the collection of all photos from the event (linked). Finally, if you think that someone would want to query across different events but that there would be far too many photos to contain them all in one collection, you could have a search box at the top of the page to do a JIT query against the data, dynamically build the items that match the query, and that may allow your customers to look at the data from different angles (obviously dynamic). It might be good to try the simple first and see what experiences you feel are good and which are missing.

Silverlight PivotViewer Now Available
Jul 02, 2010 at 1:38 PM

This partnership was announced at the TechEd 2010 keynote which you can watch here: http://www.msteched.com/2010/NorthAmerica/Keynote01.

Around 1 hr 15 mins in they show Pivot and announce it as a future part of Analysis Services. Thanks!
Silverlight PivotViewer Now Available
Jul 01, 2010 at 8:56 PM

Hello everyone! I am still tracking down the location of the SQL announcement, but I have some other thoughts to share. Great questions, you all really seem to grok what Silverlight PivotViewer is all about.

Q: How many items before it is unusable?

A: We recommend keeping a slice of a collection to just 3000 items. You may choose to have a dynamic server backing the collection that determines how to slice it to get the optimal list. An example of this is the wikipedia collection. Or you may want to have a series of linked collections that link together based on a common atrribute, like actors in a movie. That would be like our AMG movies collection. But if you want to optimize performance of items in the control at one time, three thousand is a good number.

Q: Can I use a different layout to view items?

A: No, we do not yet support those layouts, but they sound like great ideas!

Q: Are there better tools?

A: The Live Labs team released two new tools with this launch. One is an open source version of our command line tool, so that you can use the code in your custom workflow. The other is a Just in Time dynamic collection builder that serves data on the fly. They can both be found at our developers' page: http://getpivot.com/developer-info/tools.aspx

Q: Plans for a WPF Pivot viewer?

A: We do not have any short term plans for a WPF control, but there has been enough demand to make the team think hard about what it would take.

Q: How could I structure photo albums from a biannual event?

A: All three strucutres have different advantages and disadvantages. Since the PivotViewer is hosted in a webpage, you could provide links to specific collections that just contain all photos from one event (simple). Or, you could have a hierarchy where one collection shows one event as one item, and then when you open that item the viewer would launch the collection of all photos from the event (linked). Finally, if you think that someone would want to query across different events but that there would be far too many photos to contain them all in one collection, you could have a search box at the top of the page to do a JIT query against the data, dynamically build the items that match the query, and that may allow your customers to look at the data from different angles (obviously dynamic). It might be good to try the simple first and see what experiences you feel are good and which are missing.

Silverlight PivotViewer Now Available

Silverlight PivotViewer Now Available

Staff