SQLBI - Marco Russo : MDX

SQLLunch on April 23 in London and Cardiff #sqlpass #dax #sqllunch

Marco Russo (SQLBI) — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 08:52:00 GMT

On April 23 I will present DAX in Action in London and Cardiff at SQLLunch event.
How is it possible I will be in two places at the same time?
This will be a remote presentation delivered in two locations, where you can have lunch while watching the session.

What is this session about? This is the session description:

Tabular is the new SSAS modeling experience and DAX is the new language to use to create BI solution with Tabular. How does it compare with MDX and Multidimensional? In this session, which is mostly based on demos, we will build a complex BI solution from scratch, starting from simple analysis and moving through complex scenarios, showing how you will leverage the tremendous speed of DAX to create complex solution on simple data models, focusing on the differences in building the same solution in MDX or DAX.

These free events are organized by the UK SQL Server User Group. If you are interested, you can register using the following links.
London : http://sqlserverfaq.com/events/534/SQLLunch-All-stuff-no-fluff-Marco-Russo.aspx
Cardiff : http://sqlserverfaq.com/events/535/SQLLunch-All-stuff-no-fluff-Marco-Russo.aspx

MDX Studio download #mdx #ssas

Marco Russo (SQLBI) — Mon, 24 Sep 2012 11:52:00 GMT

Short version: the latest available version of MDX Studio can be downloaded from http://www.sqlbi.com/tools/mdx-studio/

Long version: Last week Stacia Misner twitted that the online version of MDX Studio was no longer available. It was hosted on http://mdx.mosha.com. It was a sad news, and it is also not good that nobody is maintaining the desktop version of MDX Studio. The latest release is the 0.4.14 and as I am writing it is still available on a SkyDrive link provided by Mosha Pasumansky, who wrote MDX Studio. Mosha does not work in Microsoft now and the entire BI community hopes that somebody will continue its work on this product. Unfortunately, it cannot be published on CodePlex because of some IP restrictions.

Only bad news? Well, I hope no. The first good news is that MDX Studio also works with Analysis Services 2012 in Multidimensional mode. The second news is that, after having checked that we can do that, we created a web page on SQLBI web site to download the latest available release of MDX Studio. I hope it will be necessary to update it in the future, by now it is just a way to simplify the finding and download of this precious tool, and to grant that it will not disappear in case the current SkyDrive using to host the download would be discontinued, like it happened to the MDX Studio online version.

Now a question to the BI Community: I know that there was some content available regarding tutorial on MDX Studio. I’d like to gather it and to put all in a single place. If you have such content, please contact me directly writing to marco (dot) russo (at) sqlbi [dot] com. Thanks!

Using SQL to query Multidimensional and Tabular models #dax #sql #mdx #ssas

Marco Russo (SQLBI) — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 13:12:00 GMT

Analysis Services answers to query in MDX, in DAX (by now just for Tabular models) and has a limited capability to answer SQL queries. It is not useful for any development or client tool, but I wanted to write a blog post on it in order to be able to...(read more)

Analyze #DAX query plan with Profiler

Marco Russo (SQLBI) — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 07:17:40 GMT

Jeffrey Wang started the 2012 (or finished the 2011, depending on your time zone) by publishing the first article dedicated to DAX Query plan . While I look forward to reading next articles, it is interesting the explanation of what is the relationship...(read more)

Learn more about MDX every day

Marco Russo (SQLBI) — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 08:05:37 GMT

I started learning MDX in 1999 and after so many years of using it and teaching it to other people, I still discover something new every day. Not only because I use it in strange ways (well, this doesn’t happen every day, at least!) but because there...(read more)

The Many-to-Many Revolution 2.0 #ssas #mdx #dax #m2m

Marco Russo (SQLBI) — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 12:17:00 GMT

In September 2006 I had announced in this blog the release of the first version of The Many-to-Many Revolution, a whitepaper that describes how to leverage the many-to-many dimension relationships feature that had being available since Analysis Services...(read more)

Converting #MDX to #DAX and PowerPivot Workshop online #ppws

Marco Russo (SQLBI) — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 09:40:00 GMT

I just published the article Converting MDX to DAX – First Steps on the renewed SQLBI web site about converting MDX to DAX. The reason is that with BISM Tabular in Analysis Services 2012 you will be able to write queries in both DAX and MDX. If you already...(read more)

Median, Moving Average, Quartile and Percentile calculations in #PowerPivot

Marco Russo (SQLBI) — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 04:18:00 GMT

Javier Guillén wrote several blog post about how to implement certain common calculations in PowerPivot. It is interesting to read his posts not only because of the solutions he propose, but also because he uses several techniques that can be applied...(read more)

#MDX Cookbook : a new must read for #SSAS developers

Marco Russo (SQLBI) — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 09:21:38 GMT

There are not so many books about MDX and it’s strange considering that it is a very sophisticated languages that requires years for learning (I’m not kidding). I started learning MDX in 1999 and after so many years, I still have to learn something. I’ve...(read more)

Vote a bug and a missing feature in #powerpivot #denali #ctp3 on #connect

Marco Russo (SQLBI) — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 07:24:00 GMT

If you have 30 seconds available, please vote the following items on Connect: https://connect.microsoft.com/SQLServer/feedback/details/679618/import-attribute-key-from-ssas-in-powerpivot When you import data coming from an Analysis Services cube in PowerPivot,...(read more)

#MDX in London and speculation about future books

Marco Russo (SQLBI) — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 08:42:00 GMT

Chris Webb, who wrote the Expert Cube Development with Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Analysis Services book with me and Alberto , is preparing another Introduction to MDX course in London, this time from October 26th to 28th. It is now a three day course...(read more)

IF and IIF statement in #mdx

Marco Russo (SQLBI) — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 08:37:00 GMT

Jeffrey Wang wrote an interesting post about internals of IF statement in MDX script , describing how and when it is rewritten as a IIF statement. The interesting news in his post is also a possible query plan tool for MDX in the future. Probably not...(read more)

Microsoft updates its BI Roadmap - #ssas #bism #teched #powerpivot

Marco Russo (SQLBI) — Wed, 18 May 2011 14:56:00 GMT

During TechEd 2011, Microsoft announced an important update to its BI roadmap . The reason why this is important is related to the previous announcement, which I discussed in November 2010 by including links to several sources and comments. At PASS Summit...(read more)

Recursive calculations in MDX #ssas #mdx

Marco Russo (SQLBI) — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 05:51:00 GMT

Jeffrey Wang wrote a very detailed blog post about recursive calculations in MDX with Analysis Services. In these days I'm doing some comparison between DAX and MDX (well, between Vertipaq/PowerPivot and OLAP/SSAS engines) and I'm discovering that MDX...(read more)

The Last Ever Non Empty calculation in MDX

Marco Russo (SQLBI) — Sun, 27 Mar 2011 21:48:51 GMT

Chris Webb posted a wonderful solution to the Last “ever” non empty calculation in MDX . I never thought to this solution and it is really a nice approach. I think that DAX might be faster in this scenario – a similar calculation has been shown in this...(read more)