The SQL Server Data Tools (SSDT) editor for Tabular models has been improved in the recent updates. For example, the Tabular Model Explorer enables you to quickly jump between the entities of your model organized in a hierarchical way. However, when it  Read more

Microsoft recently released the Service Pack 1 for SQL Server 2016. If you use Analysis Services, installing this update is a no-brainer and you should do that as soon as possible. The reason are all related to memory management. Microsoft officially  Read more

A few hours ago, DAX Studio 2.5.0 has been released, with a number of small new features (I will write about DirectQuery and new column in Server Timings in a future blog post and article). In the many bug fixes, this version of DAX Studio does not raise  Read more

A recent change in the DAX language transformed the behavior of IF statement, so that it should not return BLANK but only TRUE/FALSE if the results should be logical expressions. In that case, the BLANK is transformed in a FALSE condition. For example,  Read more

The summer is almost over and while we are working on new content (books and other for www.sqlbi.com ), I already have the plans for this Autumn’s conferences. Microsoft Ignite 2016 – September 26-30, Atlanta, GA See what’s new in SQL Server Analysis  Read more

If you are used to virtual relationships in DAX (see Handling Different Granularities in DAX ), you probably use the following pattern relatively often: [Filtered Measure ] := CALCULATE (     <target_measure>,     FILTER  Read more

If you already installed Analysis Services 2016, you should change the MemoryHeapType setting. There is a new default value (-1), which is an automatic choice that currently applies a new hybrid allocator (which has the number 5 as a value). It should  Read more

With the release of Microsoft SQL Server 2016 , there are several options to use Analysis Services Tabular. SQL Server Standard : it includes Analysis Services Tabular, and it is available in two licensing models: Server + Client Access License (CAL)  Read more

If you are using Power BI Desktop or Power Pivot in Excel 2016, you should learn when and how you can use GROUPBY instead of SUMMARIZE. The SUMMARIZE function is very powerful and internally very complex, so it’s easy to find scenarios where you get unexpected  Read more

In a couple of weeks, I will move to Australia for 3 weeks, visiting Melbourne and Sydney for a number of events and training. This is the list of topics in public events you can attend (with link to registration pages – remember that SQL Saturday conferences  Read more