Search results matching tag 'SSAS'

How Far Can You Push Tabular? Birds of a Feather at TechEd 2013–North America #msteched #ssas #tabular

sqlbi — Mon, 20 May 2013 13:15:00 GMT

I and Alberto Ferrari will moderate the following Birds of a Feather session at TechEd North America 2013:

CODE: BOF-ITP21
TITLE: How Far Can You Push Tabular?
SPEAKER: A. Ferrari; M. Russo
TIMESLOT: June 5, 2013 at 1:30 pm
ROOM: 263

Abstract: Tabular is the new engine in SQL Server Analysis Services. It is an in-memory columnar database capable of unprecedented performance but… how far can we go with an in-memory database? Will you be able to load your data warehouse in-memory to obtain the best performance? What should you care about when building the DWH? What does “fast” mean? What about real-time data? Can you query many billions rows really fast? In this BOF we will show some theory and share some of our experience, but we will welcome your questions and experience, to build a round-table of experts in order to speak about this fascinating topic.

I really look forward to this event – I and Alberto have some experience using Tabular in many different scenarios, but every time we meet new people at conferences we discover that there are new challenges ahead. This session will be the place to discuss together where are the limits today. Much far than many people realize, in my opinion!

From 0 to DAX at TechEd Pre-Conference Seminar #dax #msteched #tee13

sqlbi — Tue, 07 May 2013 12:54:00 GMT

In June I and Alberto will deliver a pre-conference seminar at both TechEd North America (New Orleans, LA) and TechEd Europe (Madrid, Spain).

This day is a very good quickstart for those of you that still didn't complete one of our books, or those of you that missed one of our workshop about Tabular or PowerPivot. If you are planning to go to TechEd, you might also consider attending a full day about DAX, following the From 0 to DAX one-day seminar. Here are the links:

TechEd North America – From 0 to DAX Pre-Conference Seminar (New Orleans, LA - June 2, 2013)
TechEd Europe – From 0 to DAX Pre-Conference Seminar (Madrid, Spain - June 24, 2013)

And in case you are underestimating the importance of DAX in your future BI projects... read this blog post from Dandy Weyn - his privileged point of view inside Microsoft highlights how much DAX is important today and will be pervasive in the future!

DAX Studio for Excel 2013 finally available! #dax #excel #powerpivot #ssas #tabular

sqlbi — Sat, 04 May 2013 05:49:00 GMT

I'm so happy that DAX Studio finally supports Excel 2013! As Darren Gosbell described in his blog, this release has a few internal changes that will better support future enhancements. I will port the code to capture the query plan for a query in this new release, but unfortunately it will require some weeks because I'm traveling a lot in these days.

If you write DAX formulas and queries for PowerPivot or Analysis Services Tabular, DAX Studio is a must have tool: do you really want to live without a DAX Editor? There are a lot of possible improvements and I hope other contributors will give their help to this Codeplex project.

Advanced DAX course in May - unique date in 1H 2013 #dax #tabular #ssas #powerpivot

sqlbi — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 08:55:00 GMT

One year after the release of SQL Server 2012 I see the growing demand for DAX. There are two reasons for that: an higher number of PowerPivot users started to build more complex data models, and SSAS Tabular is starting to be adopted by a larger number of companies, with and without a previous experience on former versions of Analysis Services.

For this reasons we decided to offer a first public edition of our Advanced DAX Workshop, a training on DAX that is aimed at Advanced PowerPivot users and Analysis Services developers that want to master the DAX language. Up to now, we offered this course only for private classes, because of the limited demand, but now there is enough interest and adoption to justify an open class.

The goal of this DAX training is learning to write DAX expressions for measures and calculated columns, DAX queries for reporting needs, read DAX query plans and optimize DAX formulas. The course is a three-day workshop that includes many hands-on lab sessions, with exercises that will guide you in the learning process of the more advanced DAX concepts, enabling you to master the writing of DAX code.

The course will be in London on May 13-15, 2013. There are direct flights with a huge number of countries and cities, also outside of Europe. We do not expect to deliver other editions of this course before other 5-6 months, so don’t lose the chance to attend this intensive DAX master course. I will be the teacher in this edition and Chris Webb will assist me in organization with Technitrain. So don’t wait, early bird discount will expire in a few days, register now and join us in London!

LASTNONBLANK and FIRSTNONBLANK functions work with any column #dax #powerpivot #ssas #tabular

sqlbi — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 10:28:50 GMT

During a PowerPivot Workshop course we received an interesting question from a student: “Can I use LASTNONBLANK (and FIRSTNONBLANK) with a column which is not a date column?”

The reason is that we introduce LASTNONBLANK in the Advanced Time Intelligence module, because its typical use case is on a date column. However, you can use these functions on any column, which raises the question about what happens at that point. The sort order used is the one that depends on the data type of the column. If it is a Text column, the alphabetical sort order is the reference order. If it is a number, then the numeric order is the reference.

What happens if a column has the “Sort By Column” property set to another column? This sort order is *not considered* by LASTNONBLANK and FIRSTNONBLANK functions. Even if a PivotTable shows you data sorted according to Sort by Column property, any DAX formula ignores such a sort order. Thus, be careful writing your DAX queries if you have to do some assumptions on the sort order of a column using DAX functions that rely on sort order, such as LASTNONBLANK and FIRSTNONBLANK.

PASS Business Analytics Conference (BAC) Recap

KKline — Sun, 14 Apr 2013 14:15:00 GMT

The PASS Business Analytics Conference (PASS BAC) is PASS' first foray into an event that is dedicated to business intelligence, big data, data visualization, and business analytics. And it totally makes sense for PASS to move in this direction, over and above the flagship community work centered on database management and application development. Why? Because business analytics is all about how to apply the data being collected and managed by all of those developers and DBAs. And, at the end of the day, how we use and apply our data is really the nexus of its value. That's what matters to business. You can read the speech from the standing president, Bill Graziano (Twitter | Blog), or watch it online at the PASS website.

The day one highlight, introduced by the SQL Server team's best presenter - Amir Netz (Twitter), is the release of a new BI data visualization tool called Project “GeoFlow” for Excel. GeoFlow is a 3D visualization and storytelling tool that helps you map, explore and interact with both geographic and chronological data for visualizing data which is difficult to identify in traditional 2D tables and charts. With GeoFlow, you can plot up to a million rows of data in 3D on Bing Maps, see data changes over time and share findings through appealing screenshots and cinematic, guided video tours of the data. It's really something you have to see to understand – check out the video demo and screenshots below. You can also download and try it out firsthand today. It’s an entirely new way to experience and share insights – one you’ll probably enjoy. For more information on GeoFlow, check out the Excel team’s blog and visit the BI website.

The highlight for me, aside from connecting with so many friends and colleagues in the exhibit hall at the SQL Sentry booth, was the day 2 keynote address by Dr. Steve Levitt of Freakonomics fame. Freakonomics is both a brilliant blog and the number one business book in America. His insights are well documented in a variety of places, not just in his own channels, but also in places such as TEDtalks. I'm also really enjoying his new website, https://www.freakonomicsexperiments.com/.

Steve presented an outstanding keynote, full of funny anecdotes and insights into the world of data analytics and interpretation. A couple of his comments really resonated with me which are worth repeating. In one story, he pointed out how some of the greatest insights came from corporate data which was collected incidentally or coincidentally. The data that help provide the greatest and most valuable revelations were from data that was basically a corporate afterthought. Another revelation - he's only now starting to make much use of relational databases. He primarily uses spreadsheets, flat files, and the Stata statistical analysis tool. Another insight, which I've known and proselytized as "the Fresh Pair of Eyes" approach, is that it really helps him to gain insights in a problem by knowing as little about the problem as possible. As it turns out, if you know the industry or the challenge at the core of the problem, you make a lot of assumptions that limit your means of interpreting data. By knowing nothing or next to nothing about a particular problem, you can ask the questions that insiders never ask. Here's an example (not from the keynote though) - let's say you're an energy company CEO. You might spend a lot of time thinking about how to accommodate the expected huge increase in energy consumption due to lots of people driving electric cars. You might tell your data analysts to figure out when and how to ensure peak electrical usage is available at the times when consumers are recharging their electric vehicles. But a fresh pair of eyes would point out that electric cars, in their present form, are a huge energy boondoggle compared to hybrid and plain ol' cheap, high-mileage models like the Honda Civic. Consumers will never recoup their investment in a high-priced, all-electric car compared to a cheap, gas sipping model.

At the heart of his presentation is the fact that data is meaningless when it doesn't answer important questions! Many times, data professionals spend so much time devising elegant SQL statements and clever user-interfaces that they forget about using a fresh pair of eyes when they look at business questions. Our session, Operational Excellence for the BI Pro, focused on the trails and travails of successfully implementing and growing the footprint of a business intelligence project.

In addition, we had a fun and very informative panel discussion breakfast on Thursday of the PASS BAC. At right is a picture of Nick Harshbarger, Justin Randal, and me prior to the session. The audience was very engaged and, despite having no slides, there was a whole lot of wisdom goin' on. The panel included Chris Webb (Twitter | Blog), Craig Utley, Jen Stirrup (Twitter | Blog), Paul Turley (Blog), and Stacia Misner (Twitter | Blog). I served as the moderator and facilitator of the session. We recorded the session, with a little HD Flip camera, and although I haven't checked out the file yet, we're hopeful we can post it or at least a transcript soon.

Do you have a "fresh eyes" story? I'd love to hear it! Post a comment here!

Many thanks,

-Kevin

-Follow me on Twitter!
- Google Author

Optimize memory in #powerpivot and #ssas #tabular

sqlbi — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 10:55:00 GMT

Microsoft published an interesting article about how to optimize memory consumption of a PowerPivot Data Model in Excel 2013. All these suggestions are also valid for SSAS Tabular. I also wrote an article Checklist for Memory Optimizations in PowerPivot and Tabular Models with a summary of the best practices.

The short list of things to do is very valuable:

Removing columns non necessary for analysis

Identity column (PK) of a fact table
Timestamps, guid and other info useful for auditing and replication, but with no data for analysis

If a column has too many distinct value and cannot be removed (i.e. transaction ID in a fact table for drillthrough), consider splitting the column into multiple distinct parts.

Each one of the parts will have a small number of unique values, and the combined total will be smaller than the original unified column.
Always separate date and time in two columns, instead of the original datetime.
In many cases, you also need the distinct parts to use as slicers in your reports. When appropriate, you can create hierarchies from parts like Hours, Minutes, and Seconds.
Keep only the granularity you really need.

Normalize columns keeping only those with the lower number of distinct values

For example, if you have quantity, price and total line amount, import quantity and price and calculate total line amount as SUMX( Sales, Sales[quantity] * Sales[price] ) instead of SUM( Sales[line amount] ) importing line amount.

Reduce precision of number to reduce distinct values (i.e. round to integer if decimal values are not relevant).

The reason is that VertiPaq compress data at column level, creating a dictionary for each column and storing for each row only the number of bits required to store the index to the dictionary. More details in the article Optimizing High Cardinality Columns in VertiPaq I wrote a few months ago and on the SSAS 2012 Tabular book.

A useful macro to analyze memory consumption and quickly identify the most expensive tables and columns in a PowerPivot workbook is available on Kasper De Jonge blog What is eating up my memory the PowerPivot / Excel edition. There is also a version for a Tabular database in his What is using all that memory on my Analysis server instance post.

Interviewed in SQL Down Under podcast #sqlserver #ssas #powerpivot

sqlbi — Mon, 01 Apr 2013 18:03:00 GMT

I’ve been interviewed by Greg Low in SQL Down Under show 58, and this is *not* an April fool! We talked for one hour about Tabular, Multidimensional, Data Warehouse and just a little bit about music (you can discover which music genre I’m used to listen…).

You can hear this interview from the SQL Down Under Show 58 page (it is an MP3 format) and if you like it there are many other past shows available. The PodCast is also available on iTunes and you can hear other podcasts in SQL Down Under page on iTunes Preview.

Discount for PASS Business Analytics Conference 2013 #passbac #ssas #sqlpass

sqlbi — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 12:02:00 GMT

One month ago I wrote about my sessions at PASS Business Analytics Conference 2013, in Chicago, IL on April 10-12, 2013. If you still have not registered, you can save $200 by using the code BAC228BL and you should hurry up, because there is another discount if you register within March 15, 2013.

If you are too lazy to click on the previous post, I will speech in two sessions:

Modern Data Warehousing Strategy
Self-Service Data Modeling

And now that Data Explorer Preview has been made public I can disclose that Data Explorer will be covered in my Self-Service Data Modeling session! I thought about writing an article about Data Explorer, but there is already a good coverage and I suggest you to read these blogs:

Introduction to Data Explorer Preview for Excel by Jason Thomas
Several posts by Chris Webb
Announcement on Data Explorer Team blog

SQL Server Data Tools - Business Intelligence for Visual Studio 2012 Released!

KKline — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 12:33:00 GMT

SSDTBI for Visual Studio 2012 enables customers to use the Analysis Services, Integration Services, and Reporting Services project templates within the Visual Studio 2012 shell. The components are delivered as a web download on the Microsoft Download center and will be available through Web Platform Installer. This release is the equivalent functionality to SSDTBI (BIDS) for Visual Studio 2010 that shipped in the SQL Server 2012 box. The team adapted the UI to meet the new Visual Studio 2012 UI design. This release delivers on the SQL commitment to provide BI Project Templates supporting the latest version of Visual Studio, a much anticipated capability. The downloads are publicly available on the Microsoft downloads website now:

Download: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=36843

More details from specific Microsoft BI teams at:

RS team blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/sqlrsteamblog/archive/2013/03/06/sql-server-data-tools-business-intelligence-for-visual-studio-2012-released-online.aspx

AS team blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/analysisservices/archive/2013/03/06/sql-server-data-tools-business-intelligence-for-visual-studio-2012-released-online.aspx

Enjoy,

-Kevin

-Follow me on Twitter!