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 reason, it’s also more difficult to analyze  Read more

Alberto Ferrari wrote an interesting article about a strange behavior of AutoExist in normalized data models . I always say that a star schema is the best practice in Power Pivot and Tabular data modeling. The issue described by Alberto is another good  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. How do you prevent a  Read more

The adoption of DAX is slowly growing and we can see that from comments to article, blog posts, web site traffic (including DAX Formatter usage). For this reason, the demand for more advanced training about DAX is also increasing. We had great feedback  Read more

I recently wrote a short article about filtering data in DAX. In the last month I’ve seen a growing number of people with a SQL background going to Tabular, without having a previous experience of MDX. In my opinion, learning DAX is easier if you try  Read more

If you work with MDX, using MDX Studio is a must, but it has not been updated for years. But community is great and Ihor Bobak has been able to apply two fixes: performance counters work with named instance and there is a single version regardless of  Read more

Since 2012 I have seen many companies adopting SQL Server Analysis Services Tabular as the analytical engine for their product or service. I think that this is still a fraction of the companies that might do the same choice. Why? Because… The features  Read more

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  Read more

I and Alberto Ferrari started delivering training on Power Pivot in 2010, initially in classrooms and then also online. We also recorded videos for Project Botticelli , where you can find content about Microsoft tools and services for Business Intelligence.  Read more

Alberto Ferrari wrote an interesting article about DIVIDE performance in DAX. This new function has been introduced in SQL Server Analysis Services 2012 SP1, so it is available also in Excel 2013 (which still doesn’t have other features/fixes introduced  Read more