Search results matching tag 'Book'

Finally in stock: Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Analysis Services: The BISM Tabular Model #ssas #tabular

sqlbi — Thu, 26 Jul 2012 10:32:00 GMT

It has been a long wait, but finally our book about Analysis Services Tabular is available!

Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Analysis Services: The BISM Tabular Model

Amazon is already shipping it in US and it should be available soon also in Europe. However, the Kindle edition is already available everywhere! If you like to order it on Amazon, here are the links for all the shops:

Amazon.com: hardcopy – kindle
Amazon.ca: hardcopy
Amazon.co.uk: hardcopy – kindle
Amazon.de: hardcopy – kindle
Amazon.es: hardcopy – kindle
Amazon.fr: hardcopy – kindle
Amazon.it: hardcopy – kindle

You can follow this link to take a look at the Table of Contents, at the Introduction and some content of other chapters. I suggest you to read the introduction and the "Who Should Read This Book” section before buying the book, so you will be sure you are getting the right one. Well, if you read this blog, you should be in the right target audience, but double check is not bad.

For your convenience, this is the list of the chapters:

Chapter 1 Introducing the Tabular Model
Chapter 2 Getting Started with the Tabular Model
Chapter 3 Loading Data Inside Tabular
Chapter 4 DAX Basics
Chapter 5 Understanding Evaluation Context
Chapter 6 Querying Tabular
Chapter 7 DAX Advanced
Chapter 8 Understanding Time Intelligence in DAX
Chapter 9 Understanding xVelocity and DirectQuery
Chapter 10 Building Hierarchies
Chapter 11 Data Modeling in Tabular
Chapter 12 Using Advanced Tabular Relationships
Chapter 13 The Tabular Presentation Layer
Chapter 14 Tabular and PowerPivot
Chapter 15 Security
Chapter 16 Interfacing with Tabular
Chapter 17 Tabular Deployment
Chapter 18 Optimizations and Monitoring
Appendix A DAX Functions Reference

We already received a good review but I hope to see many others – of course we all like the good ones, but we always look carefully at every comment so that we can improve the next one!

I’d like to give a big thank you to all the people who helped us reaching this goal. I know we set an ambitious target, trying to cover a brand new engine and development environment in a very deep way despite its infancy on the market. I think that this is just the first step in this new world, Tabular will evolve and we’ll gain more experience working with it on real word projects. But I hope that many BI developers will find it easier to start a new Tabular project with the guidance of this book. We have found that Tabular is good not only for “simple” models, but also for the complex ones, when Multidimensional faced some limitations in term of leaf-level calculation. I still don’t use Tabular for any new project, there are still many scenarios in which Multidimensional is a better choice, but don’t wait too much to start playing with DAX and Tabular. You might miss some real opportunities.

I hope you will enjoy the reading!

Analysis Services Tabular books #ssas #tabular

sqlbi — Mon, 09 Jul 2012 12:10:00 GMT

Many people are looking for books about Analysis Services Tabular. Today there are two books available and they complement each other:

Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Analysis Services: The BISM Tabular Model by Marco Russo, Alberto Ferrari and Chris Webb
Applied Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Analysis Services: Tabular Modeling by Teo Lachev

The book I wrote with Alberto and Chris is a complete guide to create tabular models and has a good coverage about DAX, including how to use it for enriching a semantic model with calculated columns and measures and how to use it for querying a Tabular model. In my experience, DAX as a query language is a very interesting option for custom analytical applications that requires a fast calculation engine, or simply for standard reports running in Reporting Services and accessing a Tabular model. You can freely preview the table of content and read some excerpts from the book on Safari Books Online. The book is in printing and should be shipped within mid-July, so finally it will be very soon on the shelf of all the people already preordered it!

The Teo Lachev’s book, covers the full spectrum of Tabular models provided by Microsoft: starting with self-service BI, you have users creating a model with PowerPivot for Excel, publishing it to PowerPivot for SharePoint and exploring data by using Power View; then, the PowerPivot for Excel model can be imported in a Tabular model and published in Analysis Services, adding more control on the model through row-level security and partitioning, for example. Teo’s book follows a step-by-step approach describing each feature that is very good for a beginner that is new to PowerPivot and/or to BISM Tabular. If you need to get the big picture and to start using the products that are part of the new Microsoft wave of BI products, the Teo’s book is for you.

After you read the book from Teo, or if you already have a certain confidence with PowerPivot or BISM Tabular and you want to go deeper about internals, best practices, design patterns in just BISM Tabular, then our book is a suggested read: it contains several chapters about DAX, includes discussions about new opportunities in data model design offered by Tabular models, and also provides examples of optimizations you can obtain in DAX and best practices in data modeling and queries.

It might seem strange that an author write a review of a book that might seem to compete with his one, but in reality these two books complement each other and are not alternatives. If you have any doubt, buy both: you will be not disappointed! Moreover, Amazon usually offers you a deal to buy three books, including the Visualizing Data with Microsoft Power View, another good choice for getting all the details about Power View.

Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Analysis Services – The BISM Tabular Model #ssas #tabular #bism

sqlbi — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 08:26:00 GMT

I, Alberto and Chris spent many months (many nights, holidays and also working days of the last months) writing the book we would have liked to read when we started working with Analysis Services Tabular. A book that explains how to use Tabular, how to model data with Tabular, how Tabular internally works and how to optimize a Tabular model. All those things you need to start on a real project in order to make an happy customer. You know, we’re all consultants after all, so customer satisfaction is really important to be paid for our job!

Now the book writing is finished, we’re in the final stage of editing and reviews and we look forward to get our print copy. Its title is very long: Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Analysis Services – The BISM Tabular Model. But the important thing is that you can already (pre)order it.

This is the list of chapters:

01. BISM Architecture
02. Guided Tour on Tabular
03. Loading Data Inside Tabular
04. DAX Basics
05. Understanding Evaluation Contexts
06. Querying Tabular
07. DAX Advanced
08. Understanding Time Intelligence in DAX
09. Vertipaq Engine
10. Using Tabular Hierarchies
11. Data modeling in Tabular
12. Using Advanced Tabular Relationships
13. Tabular Presentation Layer
14. Tabular and PowerPivot for Excel
15. Tabular Security
16. Interfacing with Tabular
17. Tabular Deployment
18. Optimization and Monitoring

And this is the book cover – have a good read!

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

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 been part of the technical reviewers of the new book from Tomislav Piasevoli, MDX with Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 Analysis Services Cookbook, which is available on Amazon, also in Kindle Edition, and on the Packt website (its publisher).

The book is, as the title says, a cookbook. As any chef, you should already have a basic (or advanced) knowledge of MDX, and in this book you’ll find a lot of solutions for common problems. I was surprised to find solutions to problems I thought were impossible to solve by using MDX, for example. You will find detailed table of contents and sample chapters in the links above. I can just say that this is a must have book for any professional SSAS developer. You just cannot afford not to know the techniques described in this book – you know, you are the expert, right? Keep your skills updated!

#MDX in London and speculation about future books

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 (previously it was two day) and you can find every other detail here.

You might be wondering whether we are writing something else... well, we don't have plan to release a new edition of the Analysis Services book - after all, all the content of the 2008 book is still fresh and will be still updated after Denali release - which we'll call BISM Multidimensional. But you know that a new model is coming and it will be BISM Tabular. Well, we are doing something... Stay tuned!

Expert Cube Development book finally on Kindle!

sqlbi — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 21:15:00 GMT

The book Expert Cube Development with Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Analysis Services is finally available on Kindle!

I received many requests for that and the last one just a couple of days ago from Greg Low in its useful review. I'm curious to see whether the sales of this book will continue also on Kindle. After 2 years this book is still continuing to sell as in the first months. The content is still fresh and will be good also with the next release of Analysis Services for developing multidimensional models. Thus, the only explanation is that the adoption of Analysis Services is still increasing and after the first cubes, readers look for more advanced content. We'll see if Kindle will follow the same trend as the printed version!

Windows Azure Step-by-Step

sqlbi — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 08:26:28 GMT

My colleague and friend Roberto Brunetti wrote Windows Azure Step by Step Microsoft Press. It is a good introductive book about programming on Windows Azure. He is a well known speaker, author and trainer in Italy and he finally used its great skills to explain Windows Azure to a broader international audience. I’m waiting my copy, in the meantime you can order your one on Amazon (also available as Kindle edition).

Moreover, for those Italian readers of this blog and for everyone one some Italian book on their bookshelf, I’m happy to announce that the Italian translation of the Microsoft PowerPivot for Excel 2010: Give Your Data Meaning will be available in a couple of weeks!

PowerPivot ebook - 50% discount offer of the day

sqlbi — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 14:59:00 GMT

Yesterday I delivered my Inside DAX session at PASS 2010. Someone might have missed the link to buy the PowerPivot for Excel 2010 book with a 50% discount that is valid just today. The link is http://oreil.ly/sqlpass2010!

PowerPivot book sample chapters available in PDF

sqlbi — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 16:12:53 GMT

You can download these two sample chapters of the PowerPivot for Excel 2010: Give Your Data Meaning book:

Chapter 2 - PowerPivot at Work

This is introductive and suggested to read to anyone who is new to PowerPivot

Chapter 7 – Date Calculations in DAX

Do you want to make date calculation in DAX? This is the chapter for you: aggregations, comparisons, semiadditive measures, balance calculation by using transaction and much else.

Look at the download link in this page: http://www.sqlbi.com/powerpivotbook.aspx

I suggest everyone to look at chapter 7 – date calculations in DAX are a very hot topic and many patterns are available and ready to use in that chapter!

PowerPivot book in stock!

sqlbi — Sun, 10 Oct 2010 15:28:00 GMT

My Microsoft® PowerPivot for Excel® 2010: Give Your Data Meaning book has been printed and is now in stock on many bookstores!

This is another good news of the past week, who have been dense of good news. I and Alberto have been interviewed by Vidas Matelis about the book and we’ve received several subscriptions for our first PowerPivot Workshop in Europe in December.

Our book is also present in the AppStore for iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. I tried it and maybe pictures are too small for an iPhone screen, but text looks very good and you can search through the book in an easy way.

Meanwhile, I’ve been working on several proof of concepts for new modeling techniques using the PowerPivot engine, which are very promising looking at the next version of Analysis Services. But I can’t say much of that. We have to wait another month to get more news at the next PASS Summit in Seattle. I will further describe in another post the two sessions I will present there later this week.

Now, I look forward to getting feedback from actual readers of the book!