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

Creating key performance indicators (KPIs)


Key performance indicators are business metrics that show the effectiveness of a business objective. They are used to track actual performance against budgeted or planned value such as Service Level Agreements or On-Time performance. The advantage of creating a KPI is the ability to quickly see the actual value compared to the target value. To add a KPI, you will need to have a measure to use as the actual value and another measure that returns the target value. In this recipe, we will create a KPI that tracks the number of fatalities and compares them to the prior year with the goal of having fewer fatalities each year.

How to do it...

  1. Open the Model.bim in the Grid view and select an empty cell and create a new measure named Last_Year_Fatalities:Last_Year_Fatalities: =CALCULATE(SUM(Crash_Data[FATALITIES]),DATEADD(MasterCalendar_T[Date],-1, YEAR))

  2. Select the already existing Sum_of_measure, then right-click, and select Create KPI....

  3. On the Key...