Search results matching tag 'Communities'

How Far Can You Push Tabular? Birds of a Feather at TechEd 2013–North America #msteched #ssas #tabular

sqlbi — Mon, 20 May 2013 13:15:00 GMT

I and Alberto Ferrari will moderate the following Birds of a Feather session at TechEd North America 2013:

CODE: BOF-ITP21
TITLE: How Far Can You Push Tabular?
SPEAKER: A. Ferrari; M. Russo
TIMESLOT: June 5, 2013 at 1:30 pm
ROOM: 263

Abstract: Tabular is the new engine in SQL Server Analysis Services. It is an in-memory columnar database capable of unprecedented performance but… how far can we go with an in-memory database? Will you be able to load your data warehouse in-memory to obtain the best performance? What should you care about when building the DWH? What does “fast” mean? What about real-time data? Can you query many billions rows really fast? In this BOF we will show some theory and share some of our experience, but we will welcome your questions and experience, to build a round-table of experts in order to speak about this fascinating topic.

I really look forward to this event – I and Alberto have some experience using Tabular in many different scenarios, but every time we meet new people at conferences we discover that there are new challenges ahead. This session will be the place to discuss together where are the limits today. Much far than many people realize, in my opinion!

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

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

Interviewed in SQL Down Under podcast #sqlserver #ssas #powerpivot

sqlbi — Mon, 01 Apr 2013 18:03:00 GMT

I’ve been interviewed by Greg Low in SQL Down Under show 58, and this is *not* an April fool! We talked for one hour about Tabular, Multidimensional, Data Warehouse and just a little bit about music (you can discover which music genre I’m used to listen…).

You can hear this interview from the SQL Down Under Show 58 page (it is an MP3 format) and if you like it there are many other past shows available. The PodCast is also available on iTunes and you can hear other podcasts in SQL Down Under page on iTunes Preview.

SQLBits XI in May 2013 – many reasons to attend! #sqlbits #dax #tabular

sqlbi — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 09:33:00 GMT

I and Alberto Ferrari will speak at SQLBits XI (Nottingham, UK – May 2-4, 2013) and there are many good reasons to join us there, especially if you are interested to DAX!

Here are our sessions:

Thursday, 02 May 2013 – Training Day - From 0 to DAX

The entire day is dedicated to learning DAX, starting from the syntax and going forward with more complex syntaxes for both expressions and queries in DAX.
Technical level: the goal is to be introductive, explaining the important concepts in DAX (such as filter context, row context, context transitions) and covering the usage of the most common DAX functions.
Target audience: Information Workers interested in exploiting the many interesting features of PowerPivot for Excel 2013 and BI developers who want to learn the DAX language.
In practice: if you started using DAX two years ago and created several projects in Tabular and/or PowerPivot with complex calculations, this is not the workshop for you (read about an Advanced DAX Workshop later in this post). But if you just started your first Tabular or PowerPivot projects and you are still wondering what CALCULATE is all about, then this is definitely the right training for you!

Friday, 03 May 2013 – 10:50am – Modern Data Warehousing Strategy

How to design a Data Warehouse in 2013? Should we change something considering the introduction of in-memory technologies such as xVelocity? Is Self-Service BI affecting the way we design and implement a Corporate Data Warehouse?
This is not a session about a specific feature of a product, but features and products have their effects on the data warehouse design. We’ll stop one hour trying to understand what changes in the big picture, affecting also our day-by-day job.

Friday, 03 May 2013 – 2:40pm – Inside xVelocity InMemory Engine (VertiPaq)

Do you use PowerPivot and/or Analysis Services Tabular? They use the same engine (xVelocity/VertiPaq) and you should know how it works.
This session will show how xVelocity/VertiPaq works, how it compresses and stores data and why it is so fast answering to your queries.
Why this is important? Because it is geeky! And because this knowledge will help you optimizing storage and DAX queries.

Saturday, 04 May 2013 – 10:50am – DAX Query Engine Internals

DAX is amazingly fast. But some query might be not fast enough.
Do you want to know how to optimize your DAX query? This session is for you.
Knowing the internals of xVelocity InMemory engine is just the first step (see Friday’s session). Then you need to apply this knowledge to DAX and understand why different DAX syntaxes for the same result might have different performance.
Understanding cross-filtering is a key to master DAX optimization. The more you know DAX, the more you will appreciate this session!

As I said before, the training day is an introductive course. If you already know DAX and want to improve your skills, there is a 3-day Advanced DAX Workshop I will teach in London on May 13-15, 2013. It could be also a good reason to visit London if you come from other countries!

Now that we are almost done with the PowerPivot for Excel 2013 book, we will write more articles – stay tuned!

March 2013 Events and Workshops in Aarhus, DK and Utrecht, NL #ssas #powerpivot

sqlbi — Wed, 06 Feb 2013 09:22:00 GMT

Spring is coming and we published many dates of SSAS Tabular Workshops around Europe and online.

Alberto Ferrari is coming to Aarhus, Denmark, for a 2-day SSAS Tabular Workshop on March 12-13, 2013 (you can see more info and register here). And Alberto will also deliver a free session in a community event on March 12 evening: the session is PowerPivot for Excel 2013 in Action and you can find more info here.

In the same month, I will go to Utrecht, The Netherlands, for the same 2-day SSAS Tabular Workshop on March 25-26, 2013 (info and registration here). We are working on a free community event on March 25, I will write an update post as soon as we define program and schedule.

If you cannot travel, Alberto will also deliver a SSAS Tabular Workshop Online on February 27-28, 2013. The schedule is optimized for America’s time zones, so attending from Europe might be convenient if you are busy in daytime. You can register this week taking advantage of the discounted Early Bird price.

And there is more to come… stay tuned!

Community Events and Workshops in November 2012 #ssas #tabular #powerpivot

sqlbi — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 09:46:00 GMT

I and Alberto have a busy agenda until the end of the month, but if you are based in Northern Europe there are many chance to meet one of us in the next couple of weeks!

Belgium, 20 November 2012 – SQL Server Days 2012 with Marco Russo
I will present two sessions in this conference, “Data Modeling for Tabular” and “Querying and Optimizing DAX”
Copenhagen, 21-22 November, 2012 – SSAS Tabular Workshop with Alberto Ferrari
Alberto will be the speaker for 2 days – you can still register if you want a full immersion!
Copenhagen, 21 November 2012 – Free Community Event with Alberto Ferrari (hosted in Microsoft Hellerup)
In the evening Alberto will present “Excel 2013 PowerPivot in Action”
Munich, 27-28 November 2012 - SSAS Tabular Workshop with Alberto Ferrari
The SSAS workshop will run also in Germany, this time in Munich. Also here there is still some seat still available.
Munich, 27 November 2012 - Free Community Event with Alberto Ferrari (hosted in Microsoft )
In the evening Alberto will present “Excel 2013 PowerPivot in Action”
Moscow, 27-28 November 2012 – TechEd Russia 2012 with Marco Russo
I will speak during the keynote on November 27 and I will present two session the day after, “Developing an Analysis Services Tabular Project BI Semantic Model” and “Excel 2013 PowerPivot in Action”
Stockholm, 29-30 November 2012 - SSAS Tabular Workshop with Marco Russo
I will run this workshop in Stockholm – if you want to register here, hurry up! Few seats still available!
Stockholm, 29 November 2012 - Free Community Event (sold-out!) with Marco Russo
In the evening I will present “Excel 2013 PowerPivot in Action”

If you want to attend a SSAS Tabular Workshop online, you can also register to the Online edition of December 5-6, 2012, which is still in early bird and is scheduled with a friendly time zone for America’s countries (which could be good for Europe too, in case you don’t mind attending a workshop until midnight!).

LASTDATE dates arguments and upcoming events #dax #tabular #powerpivot

sqlbi — Mon, 01 Oct 2012 17:04:00 GMT

Recently I had to write a DAX formula containing a LASTDATE within the logical condition of a FILTER: I found that its behavior was not the one I expected and I further investigated. At the end, I wrote my findings in this article on SQLBI, which can be applied to any Time Intelligence function with a <dates> argument.

The key point is that when you write

LASTDATE( table[column] )

in reality you obtain something like

LASTDATE( CALCULATETABLE( VALUES( table[column] ) ) )

which converts an existing row context into a filter context.

Thus, if you have something like

FILTER( table, table[column] = LASTDATE( table[column] )

the FILTER will return all the rows of table, whereas you probably want to use

FILTER( table, table[column] = LASTDATE( VALUES( table[column] ) ) )

so that the existing filter context before executing FILTER is used to get the result from VALUES( table[column] ), avoiding the automatic expansion that would include a CALCULATETABLE that would hide the existing filter context.

If after reading the article you want to get more insights, read the Jeffrey Wang's post here.

In these days I'm speaking at SQLRally Nordic 2012 in Copenhagen and I will be in Cologne (Germany) next week for a SSAS Tabular Workshop, whereas Alberto will teach the same workshop in Amsterdam one week later. Both workshops still have seats available and the Amsterdam's one is still in early bird discount until October 3rd!

Then, in November I expect to meet many blog readers at PASS Summit 2012 in Seattle and I hope to find the time to write other article on interesting things on Tabular and PowerPivot. Stay tuned!

TechEd North America 2012–Day 3 #msTechEd #teched

sqlbi — Wed, 13 Jun 2012 13:38:07 GMT

Yesterday I spent the longest day at this TechEd: we talked with many people at Community Night until 9pm and I have to say that just a few months after Analysis Services 2012 has been released, there are many people already using it. And the adoption of PowerPivot is starting to be quite large. Many new ideas and challenging coming from several different real world scenarios. I was tired but really happy.

Alberto presented his Many-to-Many Relationships in BISM Tabular session that was in the same time slot of the BI Power Hour. For this reason, very few people attended Alberto’s session so I think many will watch the recorded session (it should be available within a few days).

So what about today? I’ll spend some time at Technical Learning Center area (full schedule here) but the most important event today will be the Querying multi-billion rows with many to many relationships in SSAS Tabular (xVelocity) at the Private Cloud, Public Cloud and Data Platform Theater in the Technical Learning Center area (next to the SQL Server 2012 zone). Why you should attend? Mainly because you will see live demo over 4 billion rows table with many-to-many relationships involved in complex queries. But for those of you that think this is not enough to attend a 15 minute funny session, well, we’ll give away some 8GB USB Memory Keys to those of you that will guess exact response time of queries before execution. Convinced? Join us at 11:15am and don’t be late, the session will finish at 11:30am!

After that, we’ll run a book signing session at the Bookstore at 12:30pm and I will be in the Technical Learning Center area at 3:00pm until 5:00pm.

See you there!

TechEd North America 2012–Day 2 #msTechEd #teched

sqlbi — Tue, 12 Jun 2012 13:33:58 GMT

This is the second day at TechEd North America 2012 and yesterday I had many conversations about PowerPivot and SSAS Tabular. In the evening the book signing at O’Reilley booth has been a big success!

I’m writing this post from the speaker’s room.

It’s not crowded this morning because the keynote is going on and there are no people also in the hall, everyone is in the keynote room.

Today will be a very busy day: I’ll be staffing at Technical Learning Center from 12:30pm to 3:30pm so this is a first chance for joining the conversation about Tabular and DAX. But there is another choice this evening at Community Night starting at 6:30pm until 9:00pm. Join us at this Ask the Expert event!

And, well, don’t miss the Many-to-Many Relationships in BISM Tabular from Alberto this afternoon at 5:00 pm in room S330E. Look at my yesterday’s post if you want to look at our full schedule for the week. Enjoy TechEd!

May Schedule of SSAS #Tabular Workshop for US & Europe

sqlbi — Wed, 02 May 2012 08:01:00 GMT

As you might have read in the previous post, May is a busy month for all the editions of the SSAS Tabular Workshop. We’ll start with an online edition next week in a time slot that should be good for US and other countries in that time zones. Then there will be many other countries in our road show and Chris Webb will join Alberto in Brussels and me in London. This is the complete list:

May 7-8, 2012 – Online edition (via LiveMeeting) optimized for US & Canada time zones

But we also have someone from Europe that will like to spend two evenings with us!

May 14-15, 2012 – Brussels, Belgium

There is also a SQLUG event on May 14 in the evening, all details here!

May 21-22, 2012 – Oslo, Norway

There should be a user group event on May 21 in the evening, after the workshop. I’ll post details in another blog post as soon as it is confirmed. By now, save the date!

May 24-25, 2012 – Stockholm, Sweden

There is also a scheduled community event of SQLUG in the evening of May 24, don’t miss it!

May 28-29, 2012 – London, UK

I and Chris Webb will deliver this edition in UK – seats are limited, register soon!

May 31 – June 1, 2012 – Milan, Italy

This edition will be delivered in Italian language

And if two days are too much for you, don’t forget the one-day TechEd PreCon Using BISM Tabular in Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Services 2012:

June 10, 2012 – TechEd US in Orlando
June 25, 2012 – TechEd Europe in Amsterdam

I hope to see you in one of these dates!