Data Modeling for Power BI: first classes in three continents

Don't miss the first edition of our new Data Modeling course:

• Europe – Amsterdam, NL – April 9-11 • North America – Seattle, WA – April 23-25 • Australia – Sydney, AU – August 7-9

Read Why data modeling is important in Power BI to understand why this is a critical skill for Power BI practitioners.

New DAX Studio version, Analysis Services Query Analyzer, and more...

	• DAX Studio 2.7.3 DAX Studio 2.7.3 is available. There are no new features, it has many bug fixes described by Darren Gosbell in a blog post. New stuffs are almost already and should appear in the next release. In the meantime, upgrade your version! Read more »
	• Analysis Services Query Analyzer 0.1.0 Analysis Services Query Analyzer is a new free open source tool to analyze MDX queries on Analysis Services Multidimensional written by Francesco De Chirico and Alberto Spelta. This is the biggest effort for an MDX tool after MDX Studio. It also has an MDX Formatter. It’s a first release, setup is not trivial, read the documentation well. Chris Webb already spent good words for this tool. Read more »
	• Running M queries in Visual Studio with the Power Query SDK Chris Webb shows how to write M queries (for Power BI and Power Query) using an editor with IntelliSense and the ability to run the code and see the results. The trick is using the Power Query SDK. It is designed to write custom connectors, but it works as test environment for M queries as well. Read more »
	• Year in Review 2017 winner Microsoft announced that David Eldersveld is the winner of the 2017 Power BI “Year in Review” data storytelling contest. Read the complete list of finalists and try their reports in the official blog post. Read more »
	• SQL Server Management Studio 17.5 Microsoft release SQL Server Management Studio 17.5. Unfortunately, there are no news for BI developers connecting to Analysis Services. You probably still want to use DAX Studio. Read more »
	• Big Data, Big Dupe Book Stephen Few wrote a short book where he describes most of the nonsense behind the Big Data hype. The topic can be controversial, and Rod Avissar wrote a very interesting book review. Read more »

USERELATIONSHIP in Calculated Columns

In a Power Pivot or Tabular model with inactive relationships, one can rely on the USERELATIONSHIP function to apply an inactive relationship to a particular DAX expression. Its usage is simple in a measure, but one might consider alternative syntax in calculated columns, as is explained in this article. Read more »