When you install Analysis Services Denali, chances are that you create an instance for Tabular that is not the default instance for Analysis Services. When you try to create a Tabular project, you might get the following error: You cannot open the BIM  Read more

If you have 30 seconds available, please vote the following items on Connect: https://connect.microsoft.com/SQLServer/feedback/details/679618/import-attribute-key-from-ssas-in-powerpivot When you import data coming from an Analysis Services cube in PowerPivot,  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 looking at the icon used  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 acronyms  Read more

Microsoft released the CTP3 of Microsoft SQL Server Code Name “Denali”, as you can see in the SSAS product group blog post . This is the first public release of Denali and after many months of forced silence (I was under NDA) I can finally write my first  Read more

I and Alberto Ferrari will present a DAX Deep Dive training day at SQLBits 9 in Liverpool, on September 29th. The conference will continue on September 30th and October 1st. Registrations are not yet open, but you should definitely save the date for SQLBits!  Read more

Chris Webb, who wrote the Expert Cube Development with Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Analysis Services book with me and Alberto , is preparing another Introduction to MDX course in London, this time from October 26th to 28th. It is now a three day course  Read more

Jeffrey Wang wrote an interesting post about internals of IF statement in MDX script , describing how and when it is rewritten as a IIF statement. The interesting news in his post is also a possible query plan tool for MDX in the future. Probably not  Read more

The book Expert Cube Development with Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Analysis Services is finally available on Kindle ! I received many requests for that and the last one just a couple of days ago from Greg Low in its useful review . I’m curious to see whether  Read more

A reader of my PowerPivot book highlighted a strange behavior of the relationship between a datetime column and a Calendar table. Long story short: it seems that PowerPivot automatically round the date to the “neareast day”, but instead of simply removing  Read more