Posted by
Andy Brown
on 23 July 2018
Need to generate a partition for a fact table for each year, product or region? This blog gives five approaches, so that you can choose which method is for you.
Posted by
Andy Brown
on 23 July 2018
This blog shows how you can load the empty structure of a large fact table into an Analysis Services tabular data model, then use partitions to bring in the data bit by bit.
Posted by
Andy Brown
on 26 February 2016
Perspectives in Analysis Services let you show different parts of your tabular model to different people, but they don't have any security. To ensure that the right eyes see the right bits of your model, you'll need to create and manage security roles, as explained in this blog.
Posted by
Andy Brown
on 22 February 2016
This blog gives an outline of how to add administrators to an instance of SSAS, and how to set whether some accounts are automatically made administrators by default.
Posted by
Andy Brown
on 22 February 2016
DirectQuery mode allows you to run queries in Analysis Services (Tabular) directly against the underlying SQL Server tables imported into the model. This blog explains what DirectQuery is, shows how to enable it and gives an idea of its pros and cons.
Posted by
Andy Brown
on 19 February 2016
You can partition a table in SSAS Tabular, which involves processing it in chunks rather than in one fell swoop. This blog explains how partitions work, and how to set them up and use them.
Posted by
Andy Brown
on 19 February 2016
Processing tables involves loading data into your model, and can take a long time. This blog explains how processing works in SSAS Tabular and the different options available to you, shows how to process tables or models, and gives some ideas on how to make processing run more quickly.
Posted by
Andy Brown
on 18 February 2016
Perspectives in SSAS tabular are windows which allow you to control who sees which bits of your model. They're really easy to set up, as this blog shows, but aren't a substitute for setting security roles.
Posted by
Andy Brown
on 18 February 2016
Knowing how to write DAX queries is one thing, but where are you going to use them? This blog shows how you can integrate DAX queries into SSMS, SSRS, SSIS, Excel and PowerPivot.
Posted by
Andy Brown
on 12 February 2016
As well as creating measures to aggregate data in tabular models using DAX, you can also write queries to extract data - this blog shows you how!
Posted by
Andy Brown
on 11 February 2016
Hiearchies allow you to group related columns together, to make for prettier pivot tables and happier users. This blog shows you how to create and use hiearchies in SSAS Tabular, considers whether they're worth it, and also looks at the specific case of how to model parent-child hierarchies.
Posted by
Andy Brown
on 08 February 2016
If you've worked with date measures (or any others) in DAX for a while, you'll know they can clutter up your pivot table. This clever technique allows you to tick a single box to add lots of measures into a pivot table in one go.
Posted by
Andy Brown
on 08 February 2016
There are some wonderful date functions in DAX, with evocative names like TotalYtd, SamePeriodLastYear and ParallelPeriod. This blog shows how to use DAX date functions to summarise data, assuming that you have already created a calendar table.
Posted by
Andy Brown
on 28 January 2016
You can create key performance indicators (KPIs) within Analysis Services Tabular, but there a couple of foibles that you need to be aware of, as shown by this blog.
Posted by
Andy Brown
on 22 January 2016
In the real world (or at least, the DAX version of it), calendars and dates aren't quite as simple as one would like. This blog shows how to solve a number of common scenarios, including where different tables have different levels of "granularity", coping with special days like bank holidays, handling non-standard finanical year-end dates and dealing with a table which contains more than one date column.
Posted by
Andy Brown
on 21 January 2016
Analysis Services has lots of wonderful DAX functions like TOTALYTD and SAMEPERIODLASTYEAR which allow you to summarise your results by date, but to get them to work you'll need to create and use a calendar table first. This blog explains how, and why.
Posted by
Andy Brown
on 13 January 2016
Although the EARLIER function in DAX is complicated, it's also very useful! This blog shows how the function works, and how to use it to create running totals, sort rows, create group statistics and divide data into bands.
Posted by
Andy Brown
on 12 January 2016
The RANKX function is one way (probably the best one) to sort data. It's not the world's easiest function to understand, but this blog explains the pitfalls.
Posted by
Andy Brown
on 12 January 2016
Although the CALCULATE function is by more useful (and often easier to understand), DAX programmers should also learn about the FILTER function. This provides another way to change the query context for any aggregation.
Posted by
Andy Brown
on 12 January 2016
The CALCULATE function is the most important one in DAX. This blog shows you how to use it to replace, remove and amend the query context for a measure (and also explains what this sentence means!).