Alberto Ferrari

New Whitepaper from SQLBI: Vertipaq vs ColumnStore

AlbertoFerrari — Fri, 17 Aug 2012 13:11:34 GMT

At the end of June 2012, I was in Amsterdam to present some sessions at Teched Europe 2012 and, while preparing the material for the demos (yes, the best demos are the ones I prepare at the last minute), I decided to make a comparison between the two...(read more)

DAX in Action

AlbertoFerrari — Tue, 31 Jul 2012 07:05:11 GMT

I do not normally blog about my activity at conferences, courses and workshop, not because I don’t like these “marketing” topics, but only because I forget to do it. That said, sometimes I do some really exciting activities and, well, I need to share...(read more)

Clever Hierarchy Handling in DAX

AlbertoFerrari — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 16:46:15 GMT

Hierarchy handling in DAX is not very easy, due to the fact that hierarchies, unlike it was in MDX, are not first-class citizens in the DAX world. While hierarchies can be easily defined in the data model, there are no DAX functions that let you access,...(read more)

Speaking at Lisbon NetPonto UG on 02/13/2012

AlbertoFerrari — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 15:48:12 GMT

As you might (or not) know, I travel a lot for work and, when possible, I always try to speak at local user groups. It is fun and I always learn a lot by speaking with other professionals like me. Being in Lisbon next week, I’ll deliver a speech at Microsoft...(read more)

OT: A Good Reason to Attend #SQLBits

AlbertoFerrari — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 08:41:46 GMT

My 4yo son keeps asking me why I should leave home so often to attend SQL conferences around the world and today, after a couple of days of snow, he discovered a good reason, along with the best place for the SQLBits scarf....(read more)

Circular Dependencies in DAX

AlbertoFerrari — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 08:29:53 GMT

What is a circular dependency? If A depends on B and B depends on A, then you have a circular dependency. As programmers, we know that they should be avoided to obtain a working system. All this looks fine but, when authoring a simple DAX formula containing...(read more)

SUM or SUMX? With Simple Intermediate Calculations SUMX Is The Way To Go

AlbertoFerrari — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 09:52:19 GMT

Data modeling in Tabular is different from Multidimensional. I spend much time teaching people that they need to change their mind when approaching the Vertipaq engine, because it is a different tool with different capabilities. Nevertheless, I still...(read more)

PASS Summit 2011: good time for a chat on DAX?

AlbertoFerrari — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 08:09:44 GMT

This year I and Marco Russo will host a Birds of a Feather lunch about “ DAX, Vertipaq and BISM Tabular ” during PASS Summit in Seattle. If you want to spend some time speaking about DAX, the new Vertipaq engine of just have a good chat in front of some...(read more)

Creating a copy of a BISM Tabular project

AlbertoFerrari — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 08:40:41 GMT

Using Visual Studio to author SSAS Multidimensional projects, I was used to copy the project, deploy it with another name and then proceed with updates, until I was satisfied with the final result. Then, working with the two projects side-by-side I could...(read more)

KEEPFILTERS: a new DAX feature to correctly compute over arbitrary shaped sets

AlbertoFerrari — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 13:42:30 GMT

Having read this question on the mdsn blogs , I investigated on the KEEPFILTERS function and, after having learned it, it is now time to write about it. Moreover, before start to write about it, I need to thank the dev team of SSAS and Marco Russo who...(read more)

Deep dive day on #DAX at #SQLBits

AlbertoFerrari — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 09:37:14 GMT

September 29th I and Marco Russo will be delivering a full day of deep dive into the DAX programming language, during the training days of SqlBits 9 . Later on, during the conference, I will deliver a session about many to many relationships in DAX, exploiting...(read more)

#PowerPivot Webinar, august 17th at 11 AM CET

AlbertoFerrari — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 12:55:23 GMT

Tomorrow, at 11 AM CET, I will deliver a webinar on how to produce interesting reports with PowerPivot, a webcast which is a first taste of my incoming session for the European Sharepoint Conference. You can see all the details here: http://www.sharepointeurope.com/upcoming-webinars/self-service-bi-at-work,-an-example-of-a-powerful-user-created-report-in-powerpivot.aspx...(read more)

PowerPivot Workshop in Portugal #PowerPivot, #ppws

AlbertoFerrari — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 13:45:44 GMT

A new date is available for the PowerPivot workshop I and Marco are delivering all over Europe. On September 19-20 , 2011 we will be in Lisbon (Portugal) to present the workshop to Excel users and BI professionals. Moreover, as Denali CTP3 of PowerPivot...(read more)

OT: New transaction in the World Database

AlbertoFerrari — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 21:17:37 GMT

Wow! Today I hit F5 on this interesting transaction: BEGIN TRANSACTION INSERT INTO World.Babies (Name, Surname, DateOfBirth, Gender) VALUES ('Arianna', 'Ferrari', '20110720', 'Female'); UPDATE World.Parents...(read more)

Tabular Parent/Child Dimensions: SumOfLeaves and the CALCULATE wall

AlbertoFerrari — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 21:05:55 GMT

In my last post about Parent/Child hierarchies , there is a question, in the comments, that I found interesting. Nevertheless, the formula is a complex one and cannot be written in a simple comment. Thus, I am making a follow-up to that post. I am not...(read more)