Optimize your DAX code in Dallas, TX

Don't miss our last training of the year about DAX optimization in North America. See you in Dallas with the following courses – hurry up, the Early Bird is expiring soon!

Power BI update, Power BI Report Server Virtual Machine and more...

	• Power BI Desktop September update Microsoft released the September update of Power BI Desktop. We anticipated a few of the features coming in the previous newsletter (Drillthrough to another report page). The released bits includes some unexpected new features, like the Ribbon chart and an update to theming preview. There is also a preview of the "Explain the increase/decrease" feature that was announced at Data Insights conference. Read more »
	• On-premises data gateway September update Make sure to update your data gateway so you have the same mashup engine in both Power BI Desktop and the gateway. The update is not automatic, we hope Microsoft will change that. Watch the comments of this blog post to get an answer from Microsoft. Read more »
	• Azure VM to test Power BI Report Server A ready to use Azure Virtual Machine is the simplest way to test Power BI Report Server. You should do such a test if you are evaluating Power BI on-premises. You should not take for granted that everything works as in the Power BI service. Certain features are missing and rendering of custom visuals sometime is a challenge. Read more »
	• Simple linear regression in DAX Daniil Maslyuk shows a simple implementation of the linear regression in DAX, so you can replace SLOPE and INTERCEPT functions that exists in Excel but not in DAX. His code is using variables in an extensive way, so this is also a good example of DAX coding. Read more »
	• OpenType font to draw small charts Using a font to draw charts is an old idea to work around the lack of graphical visualizations in tables and other reports. The Spark OpenType font available on GitHub uses a nice technique to convert numbers in charts. It cannot be used in Power BI now. But it is an interesting idea suitable for other reports. Read more »
	• Legacy data sources in Tabular 1400 Both Analysis Services 2017 and Azure Analysis Services supports M queries for data sources. However, if you do not need to use M and you want to get the best possible performance, you want to use the "legacy" technique. Kay Unkroth explains how to do that in the Analysis Services blog. Be ready to get your hands dirty by changing your registry settings! Read more »
	• Get data from Azure Data Lake Store (ADLS) Both Power BI and Azure Analysis Services now support Azure Data Lake Store (ADLS) as a data source. Kay Unkroth explains how to use it in the latest version of SQL Server Data Tools. He also shows how to improve processing performance with large amount of data using ADLS, demonstrating how this can be faster than using the Azure BLOB storage. Read more »

Subtitles for SSAS Tabular video course

The SSAS Tabular video course now includes English subtitles. This feature is used often by non-English speakers, but also to clarify any doubt in pronunciation. The subtitles are already available in Introducing DAX, Power BI Dashboard Design, and Mastering DAX video courses.