Book Image

Tabular Modeling with SQL Server 2016 Analysis Services Cookbook

By : Derek Wilson
Book Image

Tabular Modeling with SQL Server 2016 Analysis Services Cookbook

By: Derek Wilson

Overview of this book

SQL Server Analysis Service (SSAS) has been widely used across multiple businesses to build smart online analytical reporting solutions. It includes two different types of modeling for analysis services: Tabular and Multi Dimensional. This book covers Tabular modeling, which uses tables and relationships with a fast in-memory engine to provide state of the art compression algorithms and query performance. The book begins by quickly taking you through the concepts required to model tabular data and set up the necessary tools and services. As you learn to create tabular models using tools such as Excel and Power View, you’ll be shown various strategies to deploy your model on the server and choose a query mode (In-memory or DirectQuery) that best suits your reporting needs. You’ll also learn how to implement key and newly introduced DAX functions to create calculated columns and measures for your model data. Last but not least, you’ll be shown techniques that will help you administer and secure your BI implementation along with some widely used tips and tricks to optimize your reporting solution. By the end of this book, you’ll have gained hands-on experience with the powerful new features that have been added to Tabular models in SSAS 2016 and you’ll be able to improve user satisfaction with faster reports and analytical queries.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
Tabular Modeling with SQL Server 2016 Analysis Services Cookbook
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
Customer Feedback
Preface

Adding data to Power BI reports


Power BI can currently connect to a wide variety of data sources. Your reports begin by connecting to the data you want to explore and visualize. For example, you can connect to file data sources like Excel, csv, txt or xml file types. You can also connect databases like SQL Server, Oracle, MySQL, PostgresSQL or Hadoop HDFS. In addition, you can get data from Azure datastores such as HDInsight, SQL Data Warehouse, and DocumentDB. In this recipe you will connect Power BI to the SQL Server Analysis Services Tabular model.

How to do it...

  1. Open Power BI desktop and select Get Data from the opening screen:

  2. On the Get Data window, select the data source you want to connect to. In this recipe you connect to the completed crash data database:

  3. Select SQL Server Analysis Services Database and then Connect.

  4. Type in your server name for the SSAS tabular model and make sure the Connect live radio button is selected and click OK:

  5. In the Navigator window, select the Crash_Data_Model_Complete...