link In many workshops and sessions about PowerPivot the most frequently asked question has always been: how can I automate the PowerPivot Data Refresh in Excel? I talked about that a few weeks ago . The sad answer is that this feature is not supported  Read more

As I already announced on this blog some weeks ago, there will be a PowerPivot Workshop in Lisbon (Portugal) on September 19-20, 2011. The evening of September 19 there will be also a free community event in Lisbon where Alberto will speak: you can find  Read more

In PowerPivot you can import data from several sources and it is often the case that you import a DateTime column from a database. From an analytical point of view, you usually make analysis over dates (day/month/year/quarter/week) and over time (hour/minute)  Read more

I already announced a few weeks ago that I and Alberto will speak at SQLBits in Liverpool. We will also speak at SQLPASS Summit in Seattle and at SQLRally Nordic . A few details about my sessions: SQLPASS Summit (Seattle, WA – October 11-14, 2011) : My  Read more

There are not so many books about MDX and it’s strange considering that it is a very sophisticated languages that requires years for learning (I’m not kidding). I started learning MDX in 1999 and after so many years, I still have to learn something. I’ve  Read more

A BISM Tabular model can be browsed in Excel by using just the standard PivotTable like it was a regular Analysis Services cube (that now we call a Multidimensional model). If you are used to PowerPivot, this seems a limitation, because you cannot interact  Read more

In an Analysis Services cube you can define drillthrough actions on a cube. This feature has been working since SQL 2005 and now it will be available in both BISM Multidimensional and BISM Tabular in the next version of SQL Server “Denali”. In the current  Read more

In the PowerPivot book and in the PowerPivot Workshop I mentioned the difference between implicit and explicit measures. The use of implicit measures might be confusing because at the end they are automatically created and maintained by the user interface  Read more

It seems that the next SQLBits will be larger than ever! The SQLBits 9 will take place in Liverpool from 29th September to 1st October 2011. It will be hard to get a nicer weather than in Brighton, but we will try to bring a bit of sun from Italy! I and  Read more

A few days ago a post about VSTO-based PowerPivot Workbook in the PowerPivot Team Blog shown a workaround for the lack of PowerPivot API in Excel. In reality, I don’t like this workaround at all, because it relies on displaying message boxes to the end  Read more