Book Image

Microsoft Tabular Modeling Cookbook

By : Paul te Braak
Book Image

Microsoft Tabular Modeling Cookbook

By: Paul te Braak

Overview of this book

Business Intelligence Semantic Models (BISM) is a technology that is designed to deliver analytical information to users through a variety of mechanisms that include model structure, definition, and design. This book demonstrates how to create BISM models so that information can be presented to users in an intuitive and easy-to-use format. Once the model is defined, we also show you how it can be managed and maintained so that the data in it remains current and secure. Microsoft Tabular Modeling Cookbook is an all-encompassing guide to developing, managing, creating, and using analytical models using the Business Intelligence Semantic Model (BISM). This title covers a range of modeling situations and common data analysis related problems to show you the techniques required to turn data into information using tabular modeling. Microsoft Tabular Modeling Cookbook examines three areas of tabular modeling: model development, model management and maintenance, and reporting. This book is a practical guide on how to develop semantic models and turn business data into information. It covers all phases of the model lifecycle from creation to administration and finally reporting. It also shows you how to create models which are designed to analyze data. All sections of BISM modeling from development to management and finally reporting are covered. The sections on development examine a wide range of techniques and tricks required to build models, including moving data into the model, structuring the model to manipulate the data, and finally the formulas required to answer common business questions; all of these are discussed in this book in detail. Finally, the book examines methods of reporting on the data within the model, including the creation of data-driven workbooks and reports for a powerful end user experience.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
Microsoft Tabular Modeling Cookbook
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Processing the data


Creating a partition (as explained in the Creating and managing partitions recipe) creates a definition of the partition (in model metadata). Once this is done, the data must be loaded into the partition if it has to become viewable. Furthermore, changes to the underlying data are not reflected in the model until the partition is processed.

Consider the situation where data is partitioned at the source database. This could be by table, partitions within tables, or views (or various combinations of these). For example, assume that we have the sales data separated in views by year, as shown in the following screenshot:

The partitioning strategy of the model also follows this structure because sales are recorded on the date that the order is placed (assume that this is a business rule) and, therefore, only the values in dbo.reseller_sales_2010 are expected to change in the source data when the data is updated (in a nightly batch). The least resource-intensive operation to...