Locating the Table Analysis Tools

Your main indication of the installation will be a new set of items within the Windows Start Programs menu. The new elements will appear in a group titled Microsoft SQL 2008 Data Mining Add-In. The new menu items should be similar to those illustrated in Figure 10-9.

Figure 10-9. Start Programs menu items

Within Excel 2010, a new item will appear in the ribbon menu. Because the ribbon is task-specific, it is necessary to have a cell within a data table selected in order to see the new ribbon items installed with the Data Mining Add-In. To illustrate this, open Excel and enter data in the first two columns as illustrated in Figure 10-10.

Figure 10-10. Example data table

Select any cell within the range of A1 to B4—that is, the column headings for Product and Quantity or any of the data rows. From the ribbon menu, select the Format As Table selection within the Styles group, as illustrated in Figure 10-11.

Figure 10-11. Format As Table selection

Select any graphical style in the list of table formats. Next, Microsoft Excel will calculate the table as the area of contiguous, non-empty cells, correctly guessing the range A1 to B4. Accept this area in the ensuing dialog, and check the box labeled “My table has headers,” as illustrated in Figure 10-12.

Figure 10-12. Format As Table range

Clicking the OK button will format the trivial dataset as an Excel data table. The important reason for this is what we will then see in the ribbon. Keeping the Microsoft Excel cursor within the new table, the context-sensitive ribbon will reveal the items installed by the Data Mining Add-In. Illustrated in Figure 10-13 is the new Table Tools ribbon, containing Analyze and Design menus.

Figure 10-13. Table Tools ribbon

As you can see in Figure 10-13, the Analyze menu contains items for task-oriented data mining operations, within a group labeled Table Analysis Tools. While we have accomplished the installation of the Data Mining Add-In, we need to connect Excel to SSAS before we can create a data mining model.