Power Pivot Vs Other Crystal reports Vs Report Builder

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How effective is power pivot in reporting from a central MS SQL database compared to Crystal Reports and report builder? Is it wise to build a C# desktop application and user power pivot as a reporting method. Thanks

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PowerPivot is not a reporting application/add-in; it is a data source. PowerPivot essentially makes an SSAS tabular cube inside of Excel. You use PowerPivot to combine and aggregate data, and calculate common measures. Crystal Reports and Report builder make reports. Your reporting tool with PowerPivot is whatever you have available in Excel, either the basic Excel charts/pivot tables or Power View.

If you use PowerPivot, you have to have a way to refresh the data from the data source. Some people have posted VBA code to do this. Or you can place your PowerPivot workbook on SharePoint and schedule a daily data refresh. If you are looking for an ad hoc/data discovery solution that end-users can query, you may want to look into PowerPivot. Otherwise, you are just using Excel to build reports.

PowerPivot can be used as a source for SSRS. It isn't an alternative product.