Search results matching tags 'Excel' and 'Tabular'

DAX Studio for Excel 2013 finally available! #dax #excel #powerpivot #ssas #tabular

sqlbi — Sat, 04 May 2013 05:49:00 GMT

I'm so happy that DAX Studio finally supports Excel 2013! As Darren Gosbell described in his blog, this release has a few internal changes that will better support future enhancements. I will port the code to capture the query plan for a query in this new release, but unfortunately it will require some weeks because I'm traveling a lot in these days.

If you write DAX formulas and queries for PowerPivot or Analysis Services Tabular, DAX Studio is a must have tool: do you really want to live without a DAX Editor? There are a lot of possible improvements and I hope other contributors will give their help to this Codeplex project.

LASTNONBLANK and FIRSTNONBLANK functions work with any column #dax #powerpivot #ssas #tabular

sqlbi — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 10:28:50 GMT

During a PowerPivot Workshop course we received an interesting question from a student: “Can I use LASTNONBLANK (and FIRSTNONBLANK) with a column which is not a date column?”

The reason is that we introduce LASTNONBLANK in the Advanced Time Intelligence module, because its typical use case is on a date column. However, you can use these functions on any column, which raises the question about what happens at that point. The sort order used is the one that depends on the data type of the column. If it is a Text column, the alphabetical sort order is the reference order. If it is a number, then the numeric order is the reference.

What happens if a column has the “Sort By Column” property set to another column? This sort order is *not considered* by LASTNONBLANK and FIRSTNONBLANK functions. Even if a PivotTable shows you data sorted according to Sort by Column property, any DAX formula ignores such a sort order. Thus, be careful writing your DAX queries if you have to do some assumptions on the sort order of a column using DAX functions that rely on sort order, such as LASTNONBLANK and FIRSTNONBLANK.

Execute a #DAX Query on #SSAS #Tabular in #Excel

sqlbi — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 12:54:00 GMT

Apparently Excel does not offer a way to import data in Excel by using a DAX query on Analysis Services. The Data Connection Wizard seems to offers only the ability to create a PivotTable when you connect to Tabular, but not a Table (see the Table option disabled in the next picture).

However, the workaround is to create a connection file and changing it with an editor (such as Notepad) so that you can write your own DAX query (or MDX, too!) and import data in an Excel table.

You can write a step-by-step guide on the article Import Data from Tabular Model in Excel Using a DAX Query I published on SQLBI web site.

DATE function does not support all the dates in DAX by design #powerpivot #tabular #dax

sqlbi — Mon, 05 Nov 2012 12:52:00 GMT

The DATE function in DAX has this simple syntax:

DATE( <year>, <month>, <day> )

If you are like me, you never read the BOL notes that says in a clear way that it supports dates beginning with March 1, 1900. In fact, I was wrongly assuming that it would have supported any date that can be represented in a Date data type in Data Models, so all the dates beginning with January 1, 1900. The funny thing is that in some of the BOL documentation you will find that Date data type supports dates after March 1, 1900 (which seems not including that date, but this is a detail…). But we should not digress. The real issue is that if you try to call the DATE function passing values between January 1 and February 28, 1900, you will see a different day as a result.

evaluate row ( "x", DATE( 1900, 1, 1 ) )

-- return WRONG result
-- [x] 12/31/1899 12:00:00 AM

evaluate row ( "x", DATE( 1901, 2, 29 ) )

-- return WRONG result
-- [x] 2/28/1900 12:00:00 AM

evaluate row ( "x", DATE( 1900, 3, 1 ) )

-- return CORRECT result
-- [x] 3/1/1900 12:00:00 AM

As usual, this is not a bug. It is “by design”. The DATE function works in this way in Excel. And also in Excel it was “by design”. In this case the design is having the same bug of Lotus 1-2-3 that handled 1900 a leap year, even though it isn’t. The first release of Lotus 1-2-3 is dated 1983. I hope many of my readers are younger than that. I tried to open a bug in Connect. Please vote it. I would like if Microsoft changed this type of items from “by design” (as we can expect) to “by genetic disease”. Or by “historical respect”, in order to be more politically correct.

Community Events in Köln (October) and Copenhagen November #ssas #tabular #powerpivot

sqlbi — Wed, 12 Sep 2012 10:12:00 GMT

Short update about community events in Europe where I will speak.

On October 11 I will present DAX in Action in Köln - all details in the PASS local chapter here: http://www.sqlpass.de/Regionen/Deutschland/K%C3%B6lnBonnD%C3%BCsseldorf.aspx

I will be speaking at a community event in Copenhagen on November 21, 2012. The session will be Excel 2013 PowerPivot in Action and details about time and location are available here: http://msbip.dk/events/30/msbip-mode-nr-9/

I will be in Köln and Copenhagen to teach the SSAS Tabular Workshop. The workshop in Köln is the first in Germany and I look forward to meet new BI developers there.

Copenhagen is the second edition after another we delivered this spring. It is a convenient location also for people coming from Malmoe and Göteborg in Sweden. Last event in Copenhagen were conflicting with a large event in Sweden, maybe this time I'll meet more people coming from the other side of the Øresund Bridge!

Many other dates and location are available on the SSAS Tabular Workshop website.