One of the current issues in Power BI is the inability to specify a Date table. The Date table is what enables us to create some of the powerful DAX time calculations like Year To Date, Month To Date and more when the Date key is not a Date data type. Ginger Grant has blogged about this issue with a proposed work around, which you can read about here. Even though we can’t exactly specify which table is our Date table in Power BI, that doesn’t mean we can’t create some nifty time calculations with Continue reading Creating Time Calculations in Power BI
Category Archives: SSAS
Executing DBCC for SQL Server Analysis Services 2016
In the upcoming release of SQL Server Analysis Services 2016, one of the new features you’ll see is the ability to perform a database consistency check against your SSAS cubes and Tabular models. Just like in the database engine side of things, DBCC for SSAS checks for corruption across the entire database or individual objects within the database.
Check out what’s new in SSAS 2016
The DBCC command is shaped likes the XMLA Process command so there’s not a lot of complexity to it. Below here, you can see the basic syntax for the SSAS DBCC command. Its worthing noting that the syntax of the command will look the same whether you’re running it against an SSAS multidimensional database or Tabular model. Continue reading Executing DBCC for SQL Server Analysis Services 2016
10 DAX Calculations for your Tabular or Power Pivot Model (Part 1)
If you’ve read my blog for a while you may have seen the following posts:
Ten MDX Calculations For Your Cube (part 1)
Ten MDX Calculations For Your Cube (part 2)
Well the time has come for me to put together a compilation of ten useful DAX calculations for your Tabular or Power Pivot model (in no particular order so don’t infer any level of ranking or importance from the order they’re posted). Continue reading 10 DAX Calculations for your Tabular or Power Pivot Model (Part 1)
Taking #PowerPivot to the Next Level
Power Pivot is an amazing, flexible and powerful business intelligence tool (among other things) and there is no doubt about that fact. As a feature included with Excel 2013 and 2016 (and an add-on for Excel 2010), Power Pivot allows user with a little technical expertise to integrate disparate data source together within a flexible data model. Once the data is loaded into Power Pivot, we easily have the ability to create powerful calculated measures, key performance indicators Continue reading Taking #PowerPivot to the Next Level
Designing a Data Warehouse from the Ground Up Webinar Recording with Q & A
Thank you to everyone that registered and attended my webinar Designing your Data Warehouse from the Ground Up webinar this past Tuesday. And I’d also like to give a special thanks to my good friend, Mitchell Pearson (b|t), for helping me present this webinar. We had a great time!
Also, thank to everyone that tuned into the live broadcast of the webinar on Periscope! I hope you enjoyed the unique perspective Periscope gives.
The good news is that Continue reading Designing a Data Warehouse from the Ground Up Webinar Recording with Q & A
#PowerBI and #SSAS Tabular: A Natural Fit with the Power BI SSAS Connector
In late June last month, the Microsoft Power BI team released the Microsoft Power BI Analysis Services Connector. The Power BI SSAS Connector allows your deployed Power BI reports to utilize your on-prem SSAS data sources. It’s super easy to set up and can be downloaded for free! And who doesn’t love “free”? Continue reading #PowerBI and #SSAS Tabular: A Natural Fit with the Power BI SSAS Connector
#MDXMonday: Previous Year Month to Date Calculation
I recently had a client give us a call asking for helping creating a calculation in her cube to show the month to date value for the previous year. Here’s the basics of the calculation I created.
View last week’s #MDXMonday –> Calculating Daily Average Sales
This calculation involve two parts. First we must create a calculation that figures the month to date value of the measure in question. To do this I used the MTD function along with Continue reading #MDXMonday: Previous Year Month to Date Calculation
My Top Four Books for the MS Business Intelligence Professional
As a Business Intelligence Consultant, I do a decent amount of speaking, interacting with the community, and have written and contributed on a few SQL Server books. A question I’m often asked is if I can recommend any good books which brings me to this blog post. I wanted to make you aware of four books for learning data warehousing and other MS BI technologies that I’ve found incredibly helpful over the years I’ve spent designing and implementing enterprise data warehouse and business intelligence solutions. Continue reading My Top Four Books for the MS Business Intelligence Professional
#MDXMonday: Calculate Daily Average Sales
Creating an SSAS MDX calculations for daily average sales is a pretty common requirement I’ve come across as a consultant for Pragmatic Works and as the instructor for Pragmatic Works Introduction to MDX class. Because of this and the fact that many people often come to me with their MDX challenges, I’ve decided to start a series of blog posts covering these challenges and experiences both as a reference for myself and other and also as a way to give back to the community. These examples will be done using the Adventure Works cube unless otherwise stated. Some of these will be simple and some will be more complicated but I hope you will enjoy learning a little bit about MDX as much I do so lets begin!
There are two basic parts to creating this calculation. The first step is Continue reading #MDXMonday: Calculate Daily Average Sales
3 SSAS Dimension Design Best Practices to Live By
After spending the last five years or so designing and performance tuning SSAS cubes and dimensions for the clients of Pragmatic Works, I’ve noticed there seems to be a recurring pattern with poorly designed dimensions. Because of this I wanted to take a few minutes to point out three easy things you can do to improve the performance and usability of your solution’s dimensions Continue reading 3 SSAS Dimension Design Best Practices to Live By