Who is RBA? BUSINESS DRIVEN APPROACH. FOR SUCCESS. TOP
EMPLOYER. STRONG MICROSOFT PARTNER. PROVEN BUSINESS.
PARTNER FOR ...
SQL 2012 Tabular Model Minnesota BI User Group
Who am I? Business Intelligence Consultant with RBA Inc.
[email protected] Twitter: @williamweber
Who is RBA?
PROVEN BUSINESS PARTNER FOR OUR CLIENTS
TOP EMPLOYER
STRONG MICROSOFT PARTNER
BUSINESS DRIVEN APPROACH FOR SUCCESS
Agenda Choose a model for your project. Set up a development environment. Build a Tabular model in SQL Server Data Tools.
Tabular vs. Multidimensional When to choose a Tabular model?
What to Consider? Development effort Money Hardware Handling of real-time data access Client Tools Feature list
Time, Money and Hardware Time – Tabular development can be much faster. – Model processing and query performance can benefit in Tabular.
Money – Tabular requires SQL 2012 Enterprise or Business Intelligence Edition. – Basic multidimensional models in Standard Edition. – Time = Money
Hardware – Tabular needs gobs of memory.
Real-time BI Processing a single table or partition has no effect on other tables in the model Using DirectQuery Tabular pushes all queries to the SQL engine. DirectQuery has some limitations however – SQL backend only – DAX queries only – which means no Excel front-end – No calculated columns
Feature Comparison Tabular
Multidimensional
Power View
Yes
No
Security
Row Filter Only
Row, Dimension, Measure, Cell
Ragged Hierarchies
No
Yes
Parent/Child Hierarchies
No (DAX workaround)
Yes
Role-play dimensions
No (workaround possible)
Yes
Many-to-many relationship
No (DAX workaround)
Yes
Writeback
No – xVelocity is read-only
Yes
Unary operators
No
Yes
Drillthrough
Yes (BIDS Helper XMLA definition) Yes
Demo Time Building a Tabular model
Things to cover Development environment Loading data Partitioning Relationships Hierarchies Measures and calculations Usability – Naming, sorting, formatting – KPIs
Deployment
Resources Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Analysis Services: The BISM Tabular Model (book) DAX Editor – Visual Studio add-in – http://daxeditor.codeplex.com/
BISM Normalizer – tool to merge tabular models – http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/5be8704f-3412-4048-bfb901a78f475c64
Whitepaper on choosing Tabular or Multidimensional – http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh994774.aspx
