In the last weeks the Microsoft BI buzzword has been Power BI for Office 365, which will be available soon in preview. I read a few comments about the fact that there is a constant discussion about the future but a lack of information and discussion about what is really used and required today in the real world. I think it is a good news that Microsoft released the first important white paper about performance in Tabular: Performance Tuning of Tabular Models in SQL Server 2012 Analysis Services.
I suggest the reading of this white paper to all of you using Analysis Services Tabular and also to Power Pivot modelers. If you already have our SSAS Tabular book, you will find some more details in the white paper in many areas. And remember the repository we have for DAX Query Plan analysis on SQLBI: http://www.sqlbi.com/topics/query-plans/ – we hopefully will add more content in the next months, after the DAX Query Plans white paper written by Alberto Ferrari.
The performance optimization in Analysis Services Tabular is a brand new topic: it’s different from the past, it’s not like SQL and it’s not like MDX. We still don’t have the right tools and the proper knowledge and experience written in books, but I think we’re on the right track to fill the gap.