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

Introduction


DAX includes many functions that enable you to aggregate and compare data over time periods. To use the time intelligence functions, you must ensure that a table has been chosen as the date table in your model. In addition, the date table must have one row for each day in the year. In the following recipes, you will use the Calc_Date_T table created in Chapter 9, DAX Syntax and Calculations. The Crash_Date will be used as the date column. The time functions will use this date table as the basis for all of the calculations.

Date calculations can be either additive or semi-additive. Additive measures can be summed across the date dimension in relation to the fact tables. For instance, total records created by month or year. Semi-additive measures can only be summed across certain dimensions but not all, for example, the opening balance of crashes recorded in a month. If you total the opening balance of crashes for each month in the year 2015, it would not total the total number...