Search results matching tag 'excel'

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.

PowerPivot Workbook Size Optimizer #powerpivot #tabular

sqlbi — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 10:50:00 GMT

Microsoft released the Workbook Size Optimizer for Excel, the first version of an Excel add-in for Excel 2013 that inspects the data model and suggest possible optimizations. Fundamentally, it tries to apply the best practices descripted in a white paper I mentioned a few weeks ago, removing useless columns and changing granularity to those that could reduce the overall memory cost of a table.

There are different setup available in the download page, depending on operating system (Windows 7 or Windows 8) and on Office version (32 or 64 bit). Once installed, you have a new tab in the Excel ribbon, called Workbook Size Optimizer, showing a single button that starts a wizard.

I tried to run the optimizer with a workbook where I imported several tables from Adventure Works Data Warehouse sample database. The first page shows a few information about the workbook size and the option of automatic detection or manual choice of rules. The latter is an option you can request also later, so I started with the default.

After a short analysis, I received three smart suggestions (considered the model I have). We might wonder that removing UnitCost is a smart thing, because it could be required in order to perform calculations and rounding the value might be not correct for our analysis.

Since I requested to apply some changes, I have the option of changing which rules to apply. This corresponds to the choice you have if you choose “Let me choose the rules myself” in the first screen of the wizard.

I kept all the rules and after I click Next I had to wait several seconds in order to complete the optimization process. The result shows a few information about the result of the job.

This is a good starting point. Don’t blindly trust any suggestion and try to consider carefully the rules to apply in order to avoid losing important data for your analysis. Moreover, you might have a better knowledge of your data model than a wizard and consider the deletion of many useless columns (for your analysis) that are not identified by the wizard. My article Checklist for Memory Optimizations in PowerPivot and Tabular Models contains several best practices that you can apply to your data model.

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.

New PowerPivot 2013 book available! #excel #powerpivot

sqlbi — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 11:25:00 GMT

Our new book about PowerPivot 2013 is finally available in printed edition, too!

The title is Microsoft Excel 2013: Building Data Models with PowerPivot and it is a partial rewriting of the previous book about PowerPivot for Excel 2010. In the previous book we had a target audience that included advanced Excel users and BI developers, because at that time there was no option to get the same engine in Analysis Services. But 30 months are elapsed, a new version of Analysis Services has been released and in this new book we focused mainly on Excel users. For this reason, we wrote a comprehensive book of all the feature of PowerPivot, but most important we tried to pass concepts of data modeling that might be pretty obvious for a DBA and a BI developer, but are completely new to an Excel user that never had the ability to create a data model with more than one table.

This book is focused on Excel 2013, so we included specific feature of this release related to PowerPivot, such as writing DAX queries and linked back tables, and features unique to Excel 2013, such as Power View. However, all of the PowerPivot features (so the 85% of the book) are good also for PowerPivot for Excel 2010 in its latest release (SQL Server 2012 SP1 PowerPivot for Microsoft Excel 2010), so you can safely use this book for both version of Excel.

You can download the first chapter of the book from the book page on SQLBI web site. And if you want to attend a training in a classroom or online, look at the complete list of available trainings on PowerPivot Workshop web site. The next online courses are scheduled on April 22-24, 2013 and June 17-19, 2013 (following online workshops are every other month).

Here are the links to directly order the book on Amazon around the world:

Amazon.com: hardcopy – kindle
Amazon.ca: hardcopy – kindle
Amazon.co.uk: hardcopy – kindle
Amazon.de: hardcopy – kindle
Amazon.es: hardcopy – kindle
Amazon.fr: hardcopy – kindle
Amazon.it: hardcopy – kindle

And here is the list of chapters:

Chapter 1 Introduction to PowerPivot
Chapter 2 Using the unique features of PowerPivot
Chapter 3 Introducing DAX
Chapter 4 Understanding data models
Chapter 5 Publishing to SharePoint
Chapter 6 Loading data
Chapter 7 Understanding evaluation contexts
Chapter 8 Understanding CALCULATE
Chapter 9 Using Hierarchies
Chapter 10 Using Power View
Chapter 11 Shaping the Reports
Chapter 12 Performing Date Calculations in DAX
Chapter 13 Using Advanced DAX
Chapter 14 Using DAX as a Query Language
Chapter 15 Automating Operations Using VBA
Chapter 16 Comparing Excel and SQL Server Analysis Services

This book should help you starting with PowerPivot at the very beginning, and you will probably use only the first chapters at that point. Over time, you will use following chapters and will learn more advanced techniques. This is not a book you can digest in a couple of days (after all, it is 500 pages long!), it will be your companion for several months, until you will master PowerPivot!

Exploring earnings data for the UK [Open Data]

jamiet — Mon, 11 Feb 2013 13:34:02 GMT

I have a burgeoning interest in the world of Open Data which wikipedia describes as:

Open data is the idea that certain data should be freely available to everyone to use and republish as they wish, without restrictions from copyright, patents or other mechanisms of control. The goals of the open data movement are similar to those of other "Open" movements such as open source, open hardware, open content, and open access. The philosophy behind open data has been long established, but the term "open data" itself is recent, gaining popularity with the rise of the Internet and World Wide Web and, especially, with the launch of open-data government initiatives such as Data.gov.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_data

To that end I follow @LondonDatastore on Twitter as they are actively publishing Open Data pertaining to the city in which I live, London. Four days ago they announced that a new dataset had been released that provided earnings information, not just for London but for the whole country and going back many years too. The provided link, http://data.london.gov.uk/datastore/package/earnings-workplace-borough, brings up a page from where one can download an Excel workbook containing some data. Unfortunately the data in that workbook is not, in my opinion, provided in such a manner that makes it easily explorable (which I have complained about before on this blog); the data is spread over multiple worksheets:

Worse, the data is already aggregated and pivoted:

In other words the workbook does not contain the raw row-level data from which this pivoted data is produced. Thankfully a link (https://www.nomisweb.co.uk/query/construct/summary.asp?mode=construct&version=0&dataset=99) is provided from where the raw data can be downloaded. I found the interface there to be slightly clunky but that’s a minor quibble – that raw data is available should be considered a major boon. I downloaded earnings data for:

Local Authority
Gender
Full Time or Part Time
Year (1999-2012)

and have made that raw data available in a publicly accessible Excel workbook. You can view that workbook online (only a browser required) at AnnualPay_by_YearGenderLocalAuthorityPartorfulltime.xlsx (from there you can also download for your own analysis).

The workbook also provides summaries over the raw data by way of pivot tables and charts. Arguably its clear to see, for example, that a gender imbalance exists although perhaps the gap may be lessening somewhat

Its interesting to note that the average salary for Males dropped off in 2009/2010. Perhaps the economic events of 2008 are the cause for that, checking out data for only City of London (the traditional financial hub of the UK) suggests that may well be the case:

There will be many more nuggets of information available in this data, all we need to do is set the data free so that people can find it for themselves. That is the aim of this blog post so hit the link: AnnualPay_by_YearGenderLocalAuthorityPartorfulltime.xlsx and see what other nuggets you can find! If dataviz is an area that interests you then this is a cracking dataset to explore!

One other point I want to make is that the raw data is provided as a mean average which means that each aggregated figure is a mean average of some mean averages. This isn’t good as it distorts the data as I demonstrate with this simple example:

We have an average salary for both male and female (5000 & 9000 respectively) and the average of those two averages is 7000. However if we take the total “total salary” / total “tally of people asked” (127000 / 23) then the average is quite different – 5521.73.

That’s a large discrepancy even for only two rows of data and it highlights the problem of providing averages rather than the figures that created those averages. To me this is a data quality issue – the raw source data does not provide the requisite level of detail to enable accurate analysis. Quality of data is paramount.

@Jamiet

New PowerPivot Workshop for Excel 2013 available! #powerpivot #excel2013 #excel

sqlbi — Mon, 04 Feb 2013 12:23:00 GMT

The Microsoft has launched the new Office 2013, we are proud to announce the availability of the new PowerPivot Workshop for Excel 2013! We have a fresh new website that offers all the training options: online and classroom courses. The target of this training are Excel Advanced Users and there are two versions of the workshop: the BASIC version is 2-day long and is good for everyone who want to start his experience with PowerPivot; the FULL version is 3-day long and the additional day is dedicated to more DAX content and practice, so also the more advanced users can satisfy his needs. All these versions are based on our upcoming Microsoft Excel 2013: Building Data Models with PowerPivot book that will be available in March 2013 (workshop’s attendees receive a free copy of that book).

The PowerPivot Workshop online is delivered every other month by me or Alberto and has different time scheduling depending on the delivery dates. We provide homework to students and use the available time online to teach content and answer attendees’ questions. The first online course will be delivered on February 19-21, 2013, and you have just one week to register using the use the Early Bird discount – more info for Basic and Full version following links.

We established partnerships with several authorized training centers around the world to deliver PowerPivot Workshop in classroom: in this case hands-on-labs assisted by the teacher are part of the course. Moreover, the PowerPivot course can be delivered in local languages: we report date, city, state, country and language of the Workshop in the list of courses available on our web site. We will publish more dates and locations in the coming weeks. Please note we are looking for training centers in states and countries we still don’t cover – we already have many ongoing discussions, but if you are interested just write us to get more info.

We'll also have more news for PowerPivot users in the coming weeks and months, which will be useful also to SSAS Tabular BI developers. The 2013 will be a long year!

Execute a #DAX Query on #SSAS #Tabular in #Excel

sqlbi — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 12:54:00 GMT

Apparently Excel does not offer a way to import data in Excel by using a DAX query on Analysis Services. The Data Connection Wizard seems to offers only the ability to create a PivotTable when you connect to Tabular, but not a Table (see the Table option disabled in the next picture).

However, the workaround is to create a connection file and changing it with an editor (such as Notepad) so that you can write your own DAX query (or MDX, too!) and import data in an Excel table.

You can write a step-by-step guide on the article Import Data from Tabular Model in Excel Using a DAX Query I published on SQLBI web site.

Linked Table, Reverse Linked Table and Linkback Table in Excel 2013 #powerpivot

sqlbi — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 13:35:00 GMT

Kasper de Jonge wrote a blog post last year introducing an interesting new feature in Excel 2013: you can write a DAX query that extracts data from the PowerPivot model and returns a table in Excel. Such a table can be used as a Linked table for the same PowerPivot model, creating an interesting opportunity to inject data in a data model mixing existing data and calculations obtained with Excel formulas.

I wrote an article on SQLBI that describes this feature in more detail and we discuss this capability also in the book Excel 2013 Building Data Models with PowerPivot that will be available in March 2013 (you can already order it). Because data can flow back and forth between Excel tables and the PowerPivot data model, we created a particular definition for each type of “connected” table:

Linked Table (Excel –> PowerPivot): the classical Linked Table
Reverse Linked Table (PowerPivot –> Excel): this is an Excel Table contained data resulting from a DAX query to the data model.
Linkback Table (PowerPivot –> Excel –> PowerPivot): this is a Linked Table based on a Reverse Linked Table (usually integrating some new columns filled with constants and/or Excel formulas).

The article shows how to create a Linkback table step-by-step, applying different Excel calculations to different rows (something you cannot do on calculated columns in DAX), and it also contains some consideration about refresh order that is applied to Linkback tables.

PowerPivot Compatibility across versions

sqlbi — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 12:44:00 GMT

There are several versions of PowerPivot available and starting with Excel 2013 there are also several versions of Excel. It is useful to look at the compatibility between the different versions of Excel and PowerPivot available now.

As a general rule when you have a PowerPivot workbook saved with a specific version of PowerPivot:

You can upgrade a workbook to a newer version of PowerPivot
You can upgrade a workbook to a newer version of Excel
You cannot open a workbook using a previous version of PowerPivot
You cannot open a workbook using a previous version of Excel, if it contains PowerPivot data

First caveat: you can open an Excel 2010 workbook containing a PowerPivot data model in Excel 2013, but once you save it in Excel 2013, you can no longer open it in Excel 2010. This is because a different file format for PowerPivot data used by Excel 2013 that cannot be understood by Excel 2010.

Second caveat: A file saved in Excel 2010 with PowerPivot 2012 (RTM or SP1) cannot be opened by an Excel 2010 running PowerPivot 2008 R2.

Each workbook has a compatibility level for PowerPivot data that corresponds to the PowerPivot version used to save the data. Here is the list of currently available compatibility levels:

1050 (2008 R2)
1100 (2012 RTM/SP1)
1103 (Excel 2013)

The following table tells you what happens when you try to open an Excel 2010 file in a certain compatibility level (columns) with a certain version of PowerPivot (rows):

	1050	1100
2008 R2	Read/Modify	Not Supported
2012 RTM	Read/Upgrade++	Read/Modify
2012 SP1	Read/Upgrade++	Read/Modify/Upgrade

++ It is important to call out that it is *not* supported editing 1050 PowerPivot models in the 2012 release – you *have to* upgrade the model to 110x before you can edit/refresh the model.

A detailed list of errors you can have opening different a workbook with a different compatibility level than the current version of PowerPivot you have is available in the article Version compatibility between PowerPivot Data Models in Excel 2010 and Excel 2013. As the article mention, PowerPivot for SharePoint can open PowerPivot workbooks of previous compatibility levels, but in order to upgrade the data on the server (scheduling a data refresh) you need to upgrade the workbook to the newer format.

You have to be careful using PowerPivot in mixed environment, especially when you want to share an Excel file containing PowerPivot data. Once you refresh PowerPivot data, you need to upgrade the compatibility level if you opened the workbook with a newer version of PowerPivot, and once you do that, your colleague with a previous version of PowerPivot can no longer open the same workbook. Saving the file on SharePoint makes it possible to navigate into data, but you need a correspondent or newer version of PowerPivot on SharePoint than that used to save the file.

For these reasons, when we provide the examples for our PowerPivot Workshop and our book for Excel 2010, the sample files are saved with the older version of PowerPivot (2008 R2). Now that we are working on the Excel 2013 version of the book and of the workshop (soon to be available!), we are finally going to release samples using a newer version of Excel and PowerPivot.

Olympics data available for all on Windows Azure SQL Database and Power View

jamiet — Thu, 29 Nov 2012 23:19:37 GMT

Are you looking around for some decent test data for your BI demos? Well, if so, Microsoft have provided some data about all medals won at the Olympics Games (1900 to 2008) at OlympicsData workbook - Excel, SSIS, Azure sample; it provides analysis over athletes, countries, medal type, sport, discipline and various other dimensions. The data has been provided in an Excel workbook along with instructions on how to load the data into a Windows Azure SQL Database using SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS).

Frankly though, the rigmarole of standing up your own ~~Windows Azure SQL Database~~ ok, SQL Azure database, is both costly (SQL Azure isn’t free) and time consuming (the provided instructions aren’t exactly an idiot’s guide and getting SSIS to work properly with Excel isn’t a barrel of laughs either). To ease the pain for all you BI folks out there that simply want to party on the data I have loaded it all into the SQL Azure database that I use for hosting AdventureWorks on Azure.

You can read more about AdventureWorks on Azure below however I’ll summarise here by saying it is a SQL Azure database provided for the use of the SQL Server community and which is supported by voluntary donations.

To view the data the credentials you need are:

Server mhknbn2kdz.database.windows.net
Database AdventureWorks2012
User sqlfamily
Password sqlf@m1ly

Type those into SSMS and away you go, the data is provided in four tables [olympics].[Sport], [olympics].[Discipline], [olympics].[Event] & [olympics].[Medalist]:

I figured this would be a good candidate for a Power View report so I fired up Excel 2013 and built such a report to slice’n’dice through the data – here are some screenshots that should give you a flavour of what is available:

A view of all the available data

Where do all the gymastics medals go?

Which countries do top ten all-time medal winners come from?

You get the idea. There is masses of information here and if you have Excel 2013 handy Power View provides a quick and easy way of surfing through it. To save you the bother of setting up the Power View report yourself you can have the one that I took these screenshots from, it is available on my SkyDrive at OlympicsAnalysis.xlsx so just hit the link and download to play to your heart’s content. Party on, people!

As I said above the data is hosted on a SQL Azure database that I use for hosting “AdventureWorks on Azure” which I first announced in March 2013 at AdventureWorks2012 now available for all on SQL Azure. I’ll repeat the pertinent parts of that blog post here:

I am pleased to announce that as of today … [AdventureWorks2012] now resides on SQL Azure and is available for anyone, absolutely anyone, to connect to and use for their own means.

This database is free for you to use but SQL Azure is of course not free so before I give you the credentials please lend me your ~~ears~~ eyes for a short while longer. AdventureWorks on Azure is being provided for the SQL Server community to use and so I am hoping that that same community will rally around to support this effort by making a voluntary donation to support the upkeep which, going on current pricing, is going to be $119.88 per year. If you would like to contribute to keep AdventureWorks on Azure up and running for that full year please donate via PayPal to adventureworksazure@hotmail.co.uk

Any amount, no matter how small, will help. If those 50+ people that retweeted me beforehand all contributed $2 then that would just about be enough to keep this up for a year. If the community contributes more than we need then there are a number of additional things that could be done:

Host additional databases (Northwind anyone??)

Host in more datacentres (this first one is in Western Europe)

Make a charitable donation

That last one, a charitable donation, is something I would really like to do. The SQL Community have proved before that they can make a significant contribution to charitable orgnisations through purchasing the SQL Server MVP Deep Dives book and I harbour hopes that AdventureWorks on Azure can continue in that vein. So please, if you think AdventureWorks on Azure is something that is worth supporting please make a contribution.

I’d like to emphasize that last point. If my hosting this Olympics data is useful to you please support this initiative by donating. Thanks in advance.

@Jamiet