The August 2015 update of Power BI Desktop added two important features for existing Excel and Analysis Services users: Import Excel Power BI artifacts (Data Model, Queries, Power View) into a new Power BI Desktop file Live Analysis Services Connections  Read more

After many years of helping several companies around the world creating small and large data models using SQL Server Analysis Services Tabular, I’ve seen a common performance issue that is underestimated at design time. The VertiPaq engine in SSAS Tabular  Read more

If you use DAX, you should try DAX Formatter . Now it supports all the new functions introduced in Power BI Desktop and in Excel 2016. There are more than 70 new functions, even if half of them corresponds to Excel functions with the same name (see the  Read more

This is a blog post completely unrelated to the technical content I’m used to cover. But I’ve been asked so many times how I do handle my mail that I thought having a blog post will save me time to explain. So, if you are not interested, wait for the  Read more

I and Alberto Ferrari recently completed the writing of The Definitive Guide to DAX , and we spent months to correctly describe the internals of evaluation context in this language. There are many details that make data model working with both DAX and  Read more

During the writing of The Definitive Guide to DAX I wanted a simple way to analyze the content and distribution of data compressed in the VertiPaq engine, used by Analysis Services Tabular, Power Pivot and Power BI models. I always relied on BISM Memory  Read more

After months of public preview, Microsoft today is releasing the Power BI service to general availability. The preview was really a beta that evolved in these months, and I personally liked the approach that MS developers have now. I did not read the  Read more

Microsoft is going to release the new Power BI service on Friday, July 24th. The number of new features is huge, but remember that this is just the beginning of a new wave of continuous updates, similarly to what we have seen for Power Query in the last  Read more

You cannot create functions in DAX, and this is a limitation to certain abstractions you might want to implement for complex models. I used a pattern that allows you to “pass an parameter” to a DAX measure, simulating the behavior of a function at least  Read more

Thanks to Darren Gosbell we have DAX Studio 2.2. In this new release: Tracing (query plans and server timings) available for Power Pivot Basic implementation of Intellisense Connect to Multidimensional SSAS servers Support for multiple Power BI Desginer  Read more