I and Alberto Ferrari will speak at SQLBits XI (Nottingham, UK – May 2-4, 2013) and there are many good reasons to join us there, especially if you are interested to DAX! Here are our sessions: Thursday, 02 May 2013…  Read more

In January I published an article about how to optimize high cardinality columns in VertiPaq. In the meantime, VertiPaq has been rebranded to xVelocity: the official name is now “xVelocity in-memory analytics engine (VertiPaq)” but using xVelocity and VertiPaq when…  Read more

white paper

VertiPaq vs ColumnStore Comparison

SQL 2012 gives you two different xVelocity engines, with different capabilities and different scenarios of implementation, the paper will help you choose the right one or, at least, raise your curiosity about performing more tests on your specific scenario.  Read more

A name is important. The right name is important. In this post, I reflect on the choice of names in the Microsoft BI stack. From time to time, a bad name arises. Not a big issue, as together we tend…  Read more

During the last months I and Alberto worked in several projects using Analysis Services Tabular and we had to face real world issues, such as complex queries, large data volume, frequent data updates and so on. Sometime we faced the…  Read more

Next week I will finally start the roadshow of the SSAS Tabular Workshop, a 2-day seminar about the new BISM Tabular model for Analysis Services that has been introduced in SQL Server 2012. During these roadshows, we always try to…  Read more

09:22

SSAS Tabular Video Course

Introduction to Analysis Services: SSAS Architecture

…”xVelocity”, but now we use the term “VertiPaq” that we will describe later. VertiPaq…  Watch now

white paper

SSAS Tabular as Analytical Engine

This article describes the pros and cons of using SQL Server Analysis Services Tabular as the analytical engine in a service or application, based on the experience of companies who have adopted it.  Read more

article

Clever Hierarchy Handling in DAX

Hierarchy handling in DAX is not very easy, due to the fact that hierarchies, unlike it was in MDX, are not first-class citizens in the DAX world. While hierarchies can be easily defined in the data model, there are no…  Read more

article

Inventory in Power Pivot and DAX: Snapshot vs. Dynamic Calculation

You can implement the calculation of stock inventory over time in several ways in DAX. The xVelocity technology in Power Pivot and Analysis Services Tabular is so fast that you might consider both dynamic calculation and snapshot-based calculation, depending on…  Read more