I hope you were able to attend my free webinar on Introduction to Analysis Services on April 2, 2013.  If you weren’t you can now download the recording here. 

Because I covered new material all the way to the end of the webinar i thought I'd also answer some of the top questions I didn’t have time to answer here.

Q: Is it true that not all versions of Excel 2013 support PoverPivot.  From what I read you need Office 2013 "Pro Plus".

Here is a great post by Rob Collie that answers this question http://www.powerpivotpro.com/2013/02/hey-who-moved-my-powerpivot-2013-cheese/.

Q: Does Analysis services has write back capability?

The only version that currently supports writeback is Multidimensional Analysis Services.

Q: Could you give a link to the VS 2012 update for theses tools to develop against sql 2012

Here’s the link to the download for Visual Studio 2012 SSDT  http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=36843

Q: Can Analysis Services Tabular be run within SSRS or do we need to use SharePoint?

This ones is kind of a two part answer.  Yes, you can use Analysis Services Tabular as a data source in an SSRS report and you can also use Reporting Services reports as a data source in PowerPivot and Tabular.

Q: We have a number of cubes that users access via Excel. They would like to be able to add simple custom calculations.  Can they add there own calculations when connected to a SSAS cube via power pivot?

Yes, a user can create their own calculations in PowerPivot call Calculated Measures using DAX.  This can be done against any data source including SSAS Multidimensional.

Q: Do relationships have to be defined in the source database?

No but it certainly helps.  If relationships are defined in the source they can usually (depending on the type of data source) be carried over to the model you create.  If there are no relationships then you must define them in your model.