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…  Read more

The Analysis Services team just posted a blog entry with a few useful links to jumpstart your experience with Tabular project in Analysis Services “Denali”. In these early days I read several messages asking for clarification about the names and…  Read more

I recently delivered the online session Create your first SSAS Tabular Model at 24HOP Pass Summit, which recording is now available here. I received many questions and did not have enough time, so I answer now in this blog post.…  Read more

SQL Server Analysis Services is a product that does not have its own product code, being sold as part of SQL Server. I think that also Microsoft does not know (and cannot know) the exact number of users. For this…  Read more

It is available the new edition of the advanced OLAP book, now called “Expert Cube Development with SSAS Multidimensional Models”. The previous edition was titled “Expert Cube Development with Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Analysis Services” and the biggest issue of…  Read more

The last update of Power Query finally supports Analysis Services Multidimensional and Tabular. I waited this version for a very long time, but now it’s finally here! Chris Webb already wrote an interesting blog post with several useful link and informations. You…  Read more

During TechEd 2011, Microsoft announced an important update to its BI roadmap. The reason why this is important is related to the previous announcement, which I discussed in November 2010 by including links to several sources and comments. At PASS Summit…  Read more

If you want to detect if a particular instance of Analysis Services “Denali” is running in Tabular or Multidimensional mode, you have several choices. In the Books On Line you can find a few instructions to detect the version by…  Read more

A few months ago I gave a speech at SQLBits 9 comparing Vertipaq vs. OLAP (you can watch session recording here), which I repeated a few times in other conferences and webcasts. The title was intentionally provocative but it contained…  Read more

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…  Read more