Power Pivot in C# & Columnar Database

I want to use Power Pivot for one of my Presentation Engine Applicaiton for Transactional Data.

Following are the questions for which I am looking for an answer.

1. What is PowerPivot?
2. Can I use power pivot if I have 100 M rows in one of my SQL server table?
3. For Handling 100M rows can I store it in simple SQL server database table or do I need columnar database?
4. How exactly does p开发者_JAVA技巧ower pivot function?

PowerPivot is simply a BI tool. There are many good BI tools, especially if you want to get into the open-source areas. Look at Pentaho, Jaspersoft, and BIRT/Actuate. These tools also can connect to many different sources/databases.

For question 3, it's all about how you're using the data. If you always query based upon the same filtering criteria, then using indexes may work for you. Assuming 100 million rows is about 50 gigs of raw data, you're starting to see the "shift" in query response/scale between a row-oriented approach and a column-oriented approach. If the queries are ad-hoc or your database size will continue to grow, then you should consider a columnar database like Infobright.