Book Image

Hands-On SQL Server 2019 Analysis Services

By : Steve Hughes
Book Image

Hands-On SQL Server 2019 Analysis Services

By: Steve Hughes

Overview of this book

SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS) continues to be a leading enterprise-scale toolset, enabling customers to deliver data and analytics across large datasets with great performance. This book will help you understand MS SQL Server 2019’s new features and improvements, especially when it comes to SSAS. First, you’ll cover a quick overview of SQL Server 2019, learn how to choose the right analytical model to use, and understand their key differences. You’ll then explore how to create a multi-dimensional model with SSAS and expand on that model with MDX. Next, you’ll create and deploy a tabular model using Microsoft Visual Studio and Management Studio. You'll learn when and how to use both tabular and multi-dimensional model types, how to deploy and configure your servers to support them, and design principles that are relevant to each model. The book comes packed with tips and tricks to build measures, optimize your design, and interact with models using Excel and Power BI. All this will help you visualize data to gain useful insights and make better decisions. Finally, you’ll discover practices and tools for securing and maintaining your models once they are deployed. By the end of this MS SQL Server book, you’ll be able to choose the right model and build and deploy it to support the analytical needs of your business.
Table of Contents (19 chapters)
1
Section 1: Choosing Your Model
4
Section 2: Building and Deploying a Multidimensional Model
8
Section 3: Building and Deploying Tabular Models
12
Section 4: Exposing Insights while Visualizing Data from Your Models
15
Section 5: Security, Administration, and Managing Your Models

Chapter 8: Adding Measures and Calculations with DAX

Now that you have created your tabular models, we will look at expanding the models further using Data Analytic Expressions, or DAX. Like MDX for multidimensional models, DAX is designed for use with Microsoft's VertiPaq engine. While MDX is modeled after SQL (SELECT…FROM…WHERE), DAX was designed for use by business and data analysts already familiar with Excel functions. In some ways, it is a happy medium between Multidimensional Expressions (MDX) and Excel functions. We can use DAX to create columns, measures, and query the database.

In this chapter, you will learn all there is to know about DAX, which will help you to enhance your existing models to meet the business requirements. Without the calculations you create with DAX, the user experience with the models will not be as good as it could be. DAX calculations allow your users to have business-ready calculations at their fingertips. Without these calculations...