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  • Common request: export #Tabular model and data to #PowerPivot

    - by Marco Russo (SQLBI)
    I received this request in many courses, messages and also forum discussions: having an Analysis Services Tabular model, it would be nice being able to extract a correspondent PowerPivot data model. In order of priority, here are the specific feature people (including me) would like to see: Create an empty PowerPivot workbook with the same data model of a Tabular model Change the connections of the tables in the PowerPivot workbook extracting data from the Tabular data model Every table should have an EVALUATE ‘TableName’ query in DAX Apply a filter to data extracted from every table For example, you might want to extract all data for a single country or year or customer group Using the same technique of applying filter used for role based security would be nice Expose an API to automate the process of creating a PowerPivot workbook Use case: prepare one workbook for every employee containing only its data, that he can use offline Common request for salespeople who want a mini-BI tool to use in front of the customer/lead/supplier, regardless of a connection available This feature would increase the adoption of PowerPivot and Tabular (and, therefore, Business Intelligence licenses instead of Standard), and would probably raise the sales of Office 2013 / Office 365 driven by ISV, who are the companies who requests this feature more. If Microsoft would do this, it would be acceptable it only works on Office 2013. But if a third-party will do that, it will make sense (for their revenues) to cover both Excel 2010 and Excel 2013. Another important reason for this feature is that the “Offline cube” feature that you have in Excel is not available when your PivotTable is connected to a Tabular model, but it can only be used when you connect to Analysis Services Multidimensional. If you think this is an important features, you can vote this Connect item.

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  • The Many-to-Many Revolution 2.0 #ssas #mdx #dax #m2m

    - by Marco Russo (SQLBI)
    In September 2006 I had announced in this blog the release of the first version of The Many-to-Many Revolution, a whitepaper that describes how to leverage the many-to-many dimension relationships feature that had being available since Analysis Services 2005. The paper contains many generic patterns that can be applied in many common data analysis’ scenarios. More than 5 years later and more then 20.000 unique people that downloaded the 1.0 paper, I am proud to announce that we released The Many-to-Many...(read more)

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  • Updates about Multidimensional vs Tabular #ssas #msbi

    - by Marco Russo (SQLBI)
    I recently read the blog post from James Serra Tabular model: Not ready for prime time? (read also the comments because there are discussions about a few points raised by James) and the following post from Christian Wade Multidimensional or Tabular. In the last 2 years I worked with many companies adopting Tabular in different scenarios and I agree with some of the points expressed by James in his post (especially about missing features in Tabular if compared to Multidimensional), but I strongly disagree in others. In general, Tabular is a good choice for a new project when: the development team does not have a good knowledge of Multidimensional and MDX (DAX is faster to learn, not so easy as it is sold by MS, but definitely easier than MDX) you don’t need calculations based on hierarchies (common in certain financial applications, but not so common as it could seem) there are important calculations based on distinct count measures there are complex calculations based on many-to-many relationships Until now, I never suggested to migrate an existing Multidimensional model to a Tabular one. There should be very important reasons for that, such as performance issues in distinct count and many-to-many relationships that cannot be easily solved by optimizing the Multidimensional model, but I still never encountered this scenario. I would say that in 80% of the new projects, you might use either Multidimensional or Tabular and the real difference is the time-to-market depending on the skills of the development team. So it’s not strange that who is used to Multidimensional is not moving to Tabular, not getting a particular benefit from the new model unless specific requirements exist. The recent DAXMD feature that allows using SharePoint Power View on Multidimensional is a really important one, even if I’d like having also Excel Power View enabled for this scenario (this should be just a question of time). Another scenario in which I’m seeing a growing adoption of Tabular is in companies that creates models for their product/service and do that by using XMLA or Tabular AMO 2012. I am used to call them ISVs, even if those providing services cannot be really defined in this way. These companies are facing the multitenancy challenge with Tabular and even if this is a niche market, I see some potential here, because adopting Tabular seems a much more natural choice than Multidimensional in those scenario where an analytical engine has to be embedded to deliver one of the features of a larger product/service delivered to customers. I’d like to see other feedbacks in the comments: tell your story of choosing between Tabular and Multidimensional in a BI project you started with SQL Server 2012, thanks!

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  • Possible SWITCH Optimization in DAX – #powerpivot #dax #tabular

    - by Marco Russo (SQLBI)
    In one of the Advanced DAX Workshop I taught this year, I had an interesting discussion about how to optimize a SWITCH statement (which could be frequently used checking a slicer, like in the Parameter Table pattern). Let’s start with the problem. What happen when you have such a statement? Sales :=     SWITCH (         VALUES ( Period[Period] ),         "Current", [Internet Total Sales],         "MTD", [MTD Sales],         "QTD", [QTD Sales],         "YTD", [YTD Sales],          BLANK ()     ) The SWITCH statement is in reality just syntax sugar for a nested IF statement. When you place such a measure in a pivot table, for every cell of the pivot table the IF options are evaluated. In order to optimize performance, the DAX engine usually does not compute cell-by-cell, but tries to compute the values in bulk-mode. However, if a measure contains an IF statement, every cell might have a different execution path, so the current implementation might evaluate all the possible IF branches in bulk-mode, so that for every cell the result from one of the branches will be already available in a pre-calculated dataset. The price for that could be high. If you consider the previous Sales measure, the YTD Sales measure could be evaluated for all the cells where it’s not required, and also when YTD is not selected at all in a Pivot Table. The actual optimization made by the DAX engine could be different in every build, and I expect newer builds of Tabular and Power Pivot to be better than older ones. However, we still don’t live in an ideal world, so it could be better trying to help the engine finding a better execution plan. One student (Niek de Wit) proposed this approach: Selection := IF (     HASONEVALUE ( Period[Period] ),     VALUES ( Period[Period] ) ) Sales := CALCULATE (     [Internet Total Sales],     FILTER (         VALUES ( 'Internet Sales'[Order Quantity] ),         'Internet Sales'[Order Quantity]             = IF (                 [Selection] = "Current",                 'Internet Sales'[Order Quantity],                 -1             )     ) )     + CALCULATE (         [MTD Sales],         FILTER (             VALUES ( 'Internet Sales'[Order Quantity] ),             'Internet Sales'[Order Quantity]                 = IF (                     [Selection] = "MTD",                     'Internet Sales'[Order Quantity],                     -1                 )         )     )     + CALCULATE (         [QTD Sales],         FILTER (             VALUES ( 'Internet Sales'[Order Quantity] ),             'Internet Sales'[Order Quantity]                 = IF (                     [Selection] = "QTD",                     'Internet Sales'[Order Quantity],                     -1                 )         )     )     + CALCULATE (         [YTD Sales],         FILTER (             VALUES ( 'Internet Sales'[Order Quantity] ),             'Internet Sales'[Order Quantity]                 = IF (                     [Selection] = "YTD",                     'Internet Sales'[Order Quantity],                     -1                 )         )     ) At first sight, you might think it’s impossible that this approach could be faster. However, if you examine with the profiler what happens, there is a different story. Every original IF’s execution branch is now a separate CALCULATE statement, which applies a filter that does not execute the required measure calculation if the result of the FILTER is empty. I used the ‘Internet Sales’[Order Quantity] column in this example just because in Adventure Works it has only one value (every row has 1): in the real world, you should use a column that has a very low number of distinct values, or use a column that has always the same value for every row (so it will be compressed very well!). Because the value –1 is never used in this column, the IF comparison in the filter discharge all the values iterated in the filter if the selection does not match with the desired value. I hope to have time in the future to write a longer article about this optimization technique, but in the meantime I’ve seen this optimization has been useful in many other implementations. Please write your feedback if you find scenarios (in both Power Pivot and Tabular) where you obtain performance improvements using this technique!

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  • Distinct Count of Customers in a SCD Type 2 in #DAX

    - by Marco Russo (SQLBI)
    If you have a Slowly Changing Dimension (SCD) Type 2 for your customer and you want to calculate the number of distinct customers that bought a product, you cannot use the simple formula: Customers := DISTINCTCOUNT( FactTable[Customer Id] ) ) because it would return the number of distinct versions of customers. What you really want to do is to calculate the number of distinct application keys of the customers, that could be a lower number than the number you’ve got with the previous formula. Assuming that a Customer Code column in the Customers dimension contains the application key, you should use the following DAX formula: Customers := COUNTROWS( SUMMARIZE( FactTable, Customers[Customer Code] ) ) Be careful: only the version above is really fast, because it is solved by xVelocity (formerly known as VertiPaq) engine. Other formulas involving nested calculations might be more complex and move computation to the formula engine, resulting in slower query. This is absolutely an interesting pattern and I have to say it’s a killer feature. Try to do the same in Multidimensional…

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  • Approaching events #mstc11 #ppws #sqlbits

    - by Marco Russo (SQLBI)
    The spring season is always full of events and I’m just preparing for a number of them. First of all, we are getting very good interest for the PowerPivot Workshop in Copenhagen on 21-22 March 2011. Tomorrow (Friday March 4) will be the last day to take advantage of the Early Bird rate for this date. We will also participate to an evening meeting of local user groups on March 21 in Copenhagen, more news about this in the next few days. Other scheduled dates are in Dublin (28-29 March 2011) and in...(read more)

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  • TechEd NorthAmerica 2010 (and MS BI Conference 2010) Sessions

    - by Marco Russo (SQLBI)
    I just read the Dave Wickert post about his sessions about PowerPivot from Microsoft at TechEd 2010 in New Orleans (June 7-10, 2010) and there are at least two things I’d like to add. First of all, there is also another conference! In fact, this time the Microsoft Business Intelligence Conference 2010 is co-located with TechEd 2010 and all the BI sessions of TechEd…. are sessions of the MS BI Conference too! The second news is that there are many other sessions about PowerPivot at the conference!...(read more)

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  • Write DAX queries in Report Builder #ssrs #dax #ssas #tabular

    - by Marco Russo (SQLBI)
    If you use Report Builder with Reporting Services, you can use DAX queries even if the editor for Analysis Services provider does not support DAX syntax. In fact, the DMX editor that you can use in Visual Studio editor of Reporting Services (see a previous post on that), is not available in Report Builder. However, as Sagar Salvi commented in this Microsoft Connect entry, you can use the DAX query text in the query of a Dataset by using the OLE DB provider instead of the Analysis Services one. I think it’s a good idea to show the steps required. First, create a DataSet using the OLE DB connection type, and provide the connection string the provider (Provider), the server name (Data Source) and the database name (Initial Catalog), such as: Provider=MSOLAP;Data Source=SERVERNAME\\TABULAR;Initial Catalog=AdventureWorks Tabular Model SQL 2012 Then, create a Dataset using the data source previously defined, select the Text query type, and write the DAX code in the Query pane: You can also use the Query Designer window, that doesn’t provide any particular help in writing the DAX query, but at least can show a preview of the result of the query execution. I hope DAX will get better editors in the future… in the meantime, remember you can use DAX Studio to write and test your DAX queries, and DAX Formatter to improve their readability!If you want to learn the DAX Query Language, I suggest you watching my video Data Analysis Expressions as a Query Language on Project Botticelli!

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  • Solving security issue in PowerPivot for SharePoint and Power View

    - by Marco Russo (SQLBI)
    I just installed a brand new server (well, a virtual machine) with SharePoint 2010 SP1 and SQL Server 2012 RC0, including PowerPivot and Reporting Services / Power View. The server is joined to the domain I use in our development environment. I published a workbook in the PowerPivot Gallery and my user was immediately able to connect, browse and navigate data of the Excel workbook published by SharePoint. Moreover, I was able to open it in Power View. However, other users failed the connection. After...(read more)

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  • LASTDATE dates arguments and upcoming events #dax #tabular #powerpivot

    - by Marco Russo (SQLBI)
    Recently I had to write a DAX formula containing a LASTDATE within the logical condition of a FILTER: I found that its behavior was not the one I expected and I further investigated. At the end, I wrote my findings in this article on SQLBI, which can be applied to any Time Intelligence function with a <dates> argument.The key point is that when you write LASTDATE( table[column] )in reality you obtain something like LASTDATE( CALCULATETABLE( VALUES( table[column] ) ) )which converts an existing row context into a filter context.Thus, if you have something like FILTER( table, table[column] = LASTDATE( table[column] ) the FILTER will return all the rows of table, whereas you probably want to use FILTER( table, table[column] = LASTDATE( VALUES( table[column] ) ) )so that the existing filter context before executing FILTER is used to get the result from VALUES( table[column] ), avoiding the automatic expansion that would include a CALCULATETABLE that would hide the existing filter context.If after reading the article you want to get more insights, read the Jeffrey Wang's post here.In these days I'm speaking at SQLRally Nordic 2012 in Copenhagen and I will be in Cologne (Germany) next week for a SSAS Tabular Workshop, whereas Alberto will teach the same workshop in Amsterdam one week later. Both workshops still have seats available and the Amsterdam's one is still in early bird discount until October 3rd!Then, in November I expect to meet many blog readers at PASS Summit 2012 in Seattle and I hope to find the time to write other article on interesting things on Tabular and PowerPivot. Stay tuned!

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  • Notepad++ used as DAX editor

    - by Marco Russo (SQLBI)
    If you use PowerPivot and write some DAX formula, don't miss this post on PowerPivotPro blog - if you want to get an external editor for your DAX formula, you can use Notepad++ for free - and adding the customization described in this post by Colin Banfield, you will get function auto-complete and tooltips. Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!...(read more)

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  • A new clients come into my web agency. How to configure email and social accounts to work better? [on hold]

    - by Marco Panichi
    I created websites for many years but still have not found the right way to organize all the email and social accounts of every clients. I mean, every web agency follows dozens of customers. Each client needs at least Google Analytics, AdWords, a Facebook page, a Twitter profile, a Youtube channel, probably a listing on Google Places and maybe a Mail Chimp (or similar) account. The web agency, in my opinion, must own these accounts, use them to deliver results to the customer and -of course- make them available to the customer for two reasons: - The customer must be able to see how things are going - The client must have the ability to change web agency without suffering The web agency, however, has many problems in having all of these accounts. For example, I like the idea of having a Gmail account for each client and from that account use all the products of Google. But is not possible to create more than many Gmail account from the same ip address and with the same phone number. The web agency could invite the customer to create his own accounts but: - This is not necessary a value for the customer (indeed...) - The web agency would manage them, however, from the same ip address, incurring in problems - If phone verification occurs, the web agency has to disturb the customer for verification Have you the same problem? How to solve it?

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  • #SSAS #Tabular Workshop and Community Events in Netherlands and Denmark

    - by Marco Russo (SQLBI)
    Next week I will finally start the roadshow of the SSAS Tabular Workshop, a 2-day seminar about the new BISM Tabular model for Analysis Services that has been introduced in SQL Server 2012. During these roadshows, we always try to arrange some speeches at local community events in the evening - we already defined for Copenhagen, we have some logistic issue in Amsterdam that we're trying to solve. Here is the timetable: Netherlands SSAS Workshop in Amsterdam, NL – April 16-17, 2012 2-day seminar, I and Alberto will be the trainers for this event, register here We're trying to manage a Community event but we still don't have a confirmation, stay tuned        Denmark SSAS Workshop in Copenhagen, DK – April 26-27, 2012 2-day seminar, I and Alberto will be the trainers for this event, register here Community event on April 26, 2012 This event will run in Hellerup, at Microsoft venue All details available here: http://msbip.dk/events/26/msbip-mode-nr-5/ People from Sweden are welcome! Just register to this private group on LinkedIn in order to announce your presence, so we’ll know how many people will attend In community events we’ll deliver two speeches – here are the descriptions: Inside xVelocity (VertiPaq) PowerPivot and BISM Tabular models in Analysis Services share a great columnar-based database engine called xVelocity in-memory analytics engine (VertiPaq). If you want to improve performance and optimize memory used, you have to understand some basic principles about how this engine works, how data is compressed, and how you can design a data model for better optimization. Prepare yourself to change your mind. xVelocity optimization techniques might seem counterintuitive and are absolutely different than OLAP and SQL ones! Choosing between Tabular and Multidimensional You have a new project and you have to make an important decision upfront. Should you use Tabular or Multidimensional? It is not easy to answer, because sometime there is a clear choice, but most of the times both decisions might be correct, at least at the beginning. In this session we’ll help you making an informed decision, correctly evaluating pros and cons of each one according to common scenarios, considering both short-term and long-term consequences of your choice. I hope to meet many people in this first dates. We have many other events coming in May and June, including an online event (for US time zones), and you can also attend our PreCon Day at TechEd US in Orland (PRC06) or TechEd Europe in Amsterdam. I’ll be a good customer for airline companies in the next three months! I’m just sorry that I hadn’t time to write other articles in the last month, but I’m accumulating material that I will need to write down during some flight – stay tuned…

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  • TechEd North America 2012 – Day 1 #msTechEd

    - by Marco Russo (SQLBI)
    Yesterday I and Alberto delivered the PreCon day about BISM Tabular in Analysis Services 2012. We received very good feedback and now I am looking forward to meet people that read our blogs and our books! Ping me on Twitter at @marcorus if you want to contact me during the conference. This is my schedule for the next few days: ·         Monday, June 11, 2012 o   10:30am-12:30pm I will be in the Technical Learning Center area, at the Breaktrough Insights (station #8) in the Database & Business Intelligence area (dedicated to SQL Server 2012) o   I will try to watch some sessions in the afternoon o   6:30pm-7:00pm I will be at the O’Reilly booth meeting book readers and doing some book signing ·         Tuesday, June 12, 2012 o   12:30pm-3:30pm I will be in the Technical Learning Center area, at the Breaktrough Insights (station #8) in the Database & Business Intelligence area (dedicated to SQL Server 2012) o   5:00pm-6:15pm I will attend the Alberto’s session DBI413 Many-to-Many Relationships in BISM Tabular (room S330E) o   6:15pm-9:00pm Community Night & Ask the Experts, we’ll discuss about Analysis Services, Tabular and Multidimensional! ·         Wednesday, June 13, 2012 o   11:15am-11:30am Don’t miss this special demo session at the Private Cloud, Public Cloud and Data Platform Theater in the Technical Learning Center area (next to the SQL Server 2012 zone). I and Alberto will present Querying multi-billion rows with many to many relationships in SSAS Tabular (xVelocity) and you’re invited to guess the response time of DAX queries on a 4 billion rows table with many-to-many relationships before we run them! We’ll give away some 8GB USB key if you guess the right answer! o   12:30pm-1:00pm I and Alberto will have a book signing session at the TechEd Bookstore o   3:00pm-5:00pm I will be in the Technical Learning Center area, at the Breaktrough Insights (station #8) in the Database & Business Intelligence area (dedicated to SQL Server 2012) ·         Thursday, June 14, 2012 o   2:45pm-4:00pm I will deliver my DBI319 BISM: Multidimensional vs. Tabular breakthrough session in room S320A. I expect many questions here! And if you want to learn more about Analysis Services Tabular, we announced two more online sessions of our SSAS Tabular Workshop: ·         July 2-3, 2012 - SSAS Workshop Online - America's time zone ·         September 3-4, 2012 - SSAS Workshop Online - America's time zone Register now if you are interested, the early bird for the July session expires on June 19, 2012! I will also deliver a SSAS Workshop in Oslo (Norway) on August 27-28, 2012.  

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  • New videos available #dax #ssas #powerpivot

    - by Marco Russo (SQLBI)
    The collaboration I and Alberto started with Project Botticelli is starting producing content. At this point we have three videos available: DAX in Action shows the power of DAX in PowerPivot solving common patterns not so easy or fast to solve in other languages DAX: Calculated Columns vs. Measures shows the difference between calculated columns and measures in DAX Introduction to DAX has a content corresponding to the title! The first two videos are freely available, the third one is longer and visible only to subscribers. The goal for this series of video is to reach advanced Excel users and BI developers that are new to DAX. If we should categorize this content, it’s a sort of level 200 session in a conference. I don’t expect readers of this blog to watch this video (if not for the sake of curiosity!) but if you have to explain this subject to anyone else and you have other priorities… well, you can add this post to the list of resources you provide for studying the subject!

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  • A proposal for #DAX Code Formatting #ssas #powerpivot #tabular

    - by Marco Russo (SQLBI)
    I recently published a set of rules for DAX code formatting. The following is an example of what I obtain: CALCULATE (     SUMX (         Orders,         Orders[Amount]     ),     FILTER (         ALL ( Customers ),         CALCULATE (             COUNTROWS ( Sales ),             ALL ( Calendar[Date] )         ) > 42 + 8 – 25 * ( 3 - 1 )             + 2 – 1 + 2 – 1             + CALCULATE (                   2 + 2 – 2                   + 2 - 2               )             – CALCULATE ( 4 )     ) ) The goal is to improve code readability and I look forward to implement a code formatting feature in DAX Studio. The DAX Editor already supports the rules described in the article. I am also considering whether to add a rule specific for ADDCOLUMNS / SUMMARIZE because I would like to see the “pairs” of arguments to define a column in the same row or with a special indentation rule (DAX expression for a column is indented in the line following the column name). EVALUATE CALCULATETABLE (        CALCULATETABLE (         SUMMARIZE (             Audience,             'Date'[Year],             Individuals[Gender],             Individuals[AgeRange],             "Num of Rows", FORMAT (COUNTROWS (Audience), "#,#"),             "Weighted Mean Age",                 SUMX (Audience, Audience[Weight] * Audience[Age]) / SUM (Audience[Weight])         ),         SUMMARIZE (             BridgeIndividualsTargets,             Individuals[ID_Individual]         ),         Audience[Weight] > 0        ),        Targets[Target] = "Maschi",     'Date'[Year] = 2010,     'Date'[MonthName] = "January" ) I would like to get feedback for that – you can use comments here or comments in original article. Thanks!

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  • PASS Summit 2012: keynote and Mobile BI announcements #sqlpass

    - by Marco Russo (SQLBI)
    Today at PASS Summit 2012 there have been several announcements during the keynote. Moreover, other news have not been highlighted in the keynote but are equally if not more important for the BI community. Let’s start from the big news in the keynote (other details on SQL Server Blog): Hekaton: this is the codename for in-memory OLTP technology that will appear (I suppose) in the next release of the SQL Server relational engine. The improvement in performance and scalability is impressive and it enables new scenarios. I’m curious to see whether it can be used also to improve ETL performance and how it differs from using SSD technology. Updates on Columnstore: In the next major release of SQL Server the columnstore indexes will be updatable and it will be possible to create a clustered index with Columnstore index. This is really a great news for near real-time reporting needs! Polybase: in 2013 it will debut SQL Server 2012 Parallel Data Warehouse (PDW), which will include the Polybase technology. By using Polybase a single T-SQL query will run queries across relational data and Hadoop data. A single query language for both. Sounds really interesting for using BigData in a more integrated way with existing relational databases. And, of course, to load a data warehouse using BigData, which is the ultimate goal that we all BI Pro have, right? SQL Server 2012 SP1: the Service Pack 1 for SQL Server 2012 is available now and it enable the use of PowerPivot for SharePoint and Power View on a SharePoint 2013 installation with Excel 2013. Power View works with Multidimensional cube: the long-awaited feature of being able to use PowerPivot with Multidimensional cubes has been shown by Amir Netz in an amazing demonstration during the keynote. The interesting thing is that the data model behind was based on a many-to-many relationship (something that is not fully supported by Power View with Tabular models). Another interesting aspect is that it is Analysis Services 2012 that supports DAX queries run on a Multidimensional model, enabling the use of any future tool generating DAX queries on top of a Multidimensional model. There are still no info about availability by now, but this is *not* included in SQL Server 2012 SP1. So what about Mobile BI? Well, even if not announced during the keynote, there is a dedicated session on this topic and there are very important news in this area: iOS, Android and Microsoft mobile platforms: the commitment is to get data exploration and visualization capabilities working within June 2013. This should impact at least Power View and SharePoint/Excel Services. This is the type of UI experience we are all waiting for, in order to satisfy the requests coming from users and customers. The important news here is that native applications will be available for both iOS and Windows 8 so it seems that Android will be supported initially only through the web. Unfortunately we haven’t seen any demo, so it’s not clear what will be the offline navigation experience (and whether there will be one). But at least we know that Microsoft is working on native applications in this area. I’m not too surprised that HTML5 is not the magic bullet for all the platforms. The next PASS Business Analytics conference in 2013 seems a good place to see this in action, even if I hope we don’t have to wait other six months before seeing some demo of native BI applications on mobile platforms! Viewing Reporting Services reports on iPad is supported starting with SQL Server 2012 SP1, which has been released today. This is another good reason to install SP1 on SQL Server 2012. If you are at PASS Summit 2012, come and join me, Alberto Ferrari and Chris Webb at our book signing event tomorrow, Thursday 8 2012, at the bookstore between 12:00pm and 12:30pm, or follow one of our sessions!

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  • Difference between DISTINCT and VALUES in DAX

    - by Marco Russo (SQLBI)
    I recently got a question about differences between DISTINCT and VALUES in DAX and thanks to Jeffrey Wang I created a simple example to describe the difference. Consider the two tables below: Fact and Dim tables, having a single column with the same name of the table. A relationship exists between Fact[Fact] and Dim[Dim]. This relationship generates a referential integrity violations in table Fact for rows containing C, which doesn’t exist in table Dim. In this case, an empty row is virtually inserted...(read more)

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  • PowerPivot FILTER condition optimizations

    - by Marco Russo (SQLBI)
    In the comments of a recent post from Alberto Ferrari there was an interesting note about different performance related to the order of conditions in a FILTER call. I investigated about that and Jeffrey Wang has been so nice to give me some info about actual implementation that I can share on a blog post. First of all, an important disclaimer: PowerPivot is intended to make life easier, not requiring the user to think how to write the order of elements in a formula just to get better performance....(read more)

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  • A new Excel 2010 book for Data Analysis

    - by Marco Russo (SQLBI)
    Microsoft Press just announced the printing of Microsoft Excel 2010: Data Analysis and Business Modeling , which is the third edition of the book written by Wayne L. Winston covering many data analysis and modeling techniques using a very clear problem-solution approach, including a good statistical explanation whenever it is necessary. I suggest this book as a good complement to our Microsoft PowerPivot for Excel 2010: Give Your Data Meaning !...(read more)

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  • Rounding functions in DAX

    - by Marco Russo (SQLBI)
    Today I prepared a table of the many rounding functions available in DAX (yes, it’s part of the book we’re writing), so that I have a complete schema of the better function to use, depending on the round operation I need to do. Here is the list of functions used and then the results shown for a relevant set of values. FLOOR = FLOOR( Tests[Value], 0.01 ) TRUNC = TRUNC( Tests[Value], 2 ) ROUNDDOWN = ROUNDDOWN( Tests[Value], 2 ) MROUND = MROUND( Tests[Value], 0.01 ) ROUND = ROUND( Tests[Value], 2 )...(read more)

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  • Tips for adapting Date table to Power View forecasting #powerview #powerbi

    - by Marco Russo (SQLBI)
    During the keynote of the PASS Business Analytics Conference, Amir Netz presented the new forecasting capabilities in Power View for Office 365. I immediately tried the new feature (which was immediately available, a welcome surprise in a Microsoft announcement for a new release) and I had several issues trying to use existing data models. The forecasting has a few requirements that are not compatible with the “best practices” commonly used for a calendar table until this announcement. For example, if you have a Year-Month-Day hierarchy and you want to display a line chart aggregating data at the month level, you use a column containing month and year as a string (e.g. May 2014) sorted by a numeric column (such as 201405). Such a column cannot be used in the x-axis of a line chart for forecasting, because you need a date or numeric column. There are also other requirements and I wrote the article Prepare Data for Power View Forecasting in Power BI on SQLBI, describing how to create columns that can be used with the new forecasting capabilities in Power View for Office 365.

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  • TechEd North America 2012–Day 2 #msTechEd #teched

    - by Marco Russo (SQLBI)
    This is the second day at TechEd North America 2012 and yesterday I had many conversations about PowerPivot and SSAS Tabular. In the evening the book signing at O’Reilley booth has been a big success! I’m writing this post from the speaker’s room. It’s not crowded this morning because the keynote is going on and there are no people also in the hall, everyone is in the keynote room. Today will be a very busy day: I’ll be staffing at Technical Learning Center from 12:30pm to 3:30pm so this is a first chance for joining the conversation about Tabular and DAX. But there is another choice this evening at Community Night starting at 6:30pm until 9:00pm. Join us at this Ask the Expert event! And, well, don’t miss the Many-to-Many Relationships in BISM Tabular from Alberto this afternoon at 5:00 pm in room S330E. Look at my yesterday’s post if you want to look at our full schedule for the week. Enjoy TechEd!

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  • Parallelize incremental processing in Tabular #ssas #tabular

    - by Marco Russo (SQLBI)
    I recently came in a problem trying to improve the parallelism of Tabular processing. As you know, multiple tables can be processed in parallel, whereas the processing of several partitions within the same table cannot be parallelized. When you perform an incremental update by adding only new rows to existing table, what you really do is adding rows to a partition, so adding rows to many tables means adding rows to several partitions. The particular condition you have in this case is that every partition in which you add rows belongs to a different table. Adding rows implies using the ProcessAdd command; its QueryBinding parameter specifies a SQL syntax to read new rows, otherwise the original query specified for the partition will be used, and it could generate duplicated data if you don’t have a dynamic behavior on the SQL side. If you create the required XMLA code manually, you will find that the QueryBinding node that should be part of the ProcessAdd command has to be moved out from ProcessAdd in case you are using a Batch command with more than one Process command (which is the reason why you want to use a single batch: run multiple process operations in parallel!). If you use AMO (Analysis Management Objects) you will find that this combination is not supported, even if you don’t have a syntax error compiling the code, but you might obtain this error at execution time: The syntax for the 'Process' command is incorrect. The 'Bindings' keyword cannot appear under a 'Process' command if the 'Process' command is a part of a 'Batch' command and there are more than one 'Process' commands in the 'Batch' or the 'Batch' command contains any out of line related information. In this case, the 'Bindings' keyword should be a part of the 'Batch' command only. If this is happening to you, the best solution I’ve found is manipulating the XMLA code generated by AMO moving the Binding nodes in the right place. A more detailed description of the issue and the code required to send a correct XMLA batch to Analysis Services is available in my article Parallelize ProcessAdd with AMO. By the way, the same technique (and code) can be used also if you have the same problem in a Multidimensional model.

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  • Rounding functions in DAX

    - by Marco Russo (SQLBI)
    Today I prepared a table of the many rounding functions available in DAX (yes, it’s part of the book we’re writing), so that I have a complete schema of the better function to use, depending on the round operation I need to do. Here is the list of functions used and then the results shown for a relevant set of values. FLOOR = FLOOR( Tests[Value], 0.01 ) TRUNC = TRUNC( Tests[Value], 2 ) ROUNDDOWN = ROUNDDOWN( Tests[Value], 2 ) MROUND = MROUND( Tests[Value], 0.01 ) ROUND = ROUND( Tests[Value], 2 )...(read more)

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