During the last months I and Alberto worked in several projects using Analysis Services Tabular and we had to face real world issues, such as complex queries, large data volume, frequent data updates and so on. Sometime we faced the challenge of comparing Tabular performance with SQL Server. It seemed a non-sense, because even if the same core ...

Registrations are now open for the SSAS Maestro course in July 2012, which will take place in Milan (Italy). I introduced this course in a previous blog post and I’m not going to repeat all the details here. I just want to highlight a few updates, the biggest one is related to the cost of the course. We received several feedback and cut some of ...

We finally have the registration website for the community event about Tabular in Analysis Services in Amsterdam on April 16 evening that I introduced in my previous post - don't miss it, the registration are open (and limited!) at: http://passnl-april2012.eventbrite.com/ This is really a ''last-minute'' event, but we're pretty confident ...

A few hours ago Chris Webb blogged about SSAS Maestro and I’d like to propagate the news, adding also some background info. SSAS Maestro is the premier certification on Analysis Services that selects the best experts in Analysis Services around the world. In 2011 Microsoft organized two rounds of training/exams for SSAS Maestros and up to now ...

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 2005. The paper contains many generic patterns that can be applied in many common data ...

Thomas Kejser and Denny Lee released the new Analysis Services 2008 R2 Performance Guide. This is an absolutely must read for any SSAS developer. Remember that many of the optimizations are obtained by doing a proper cube design. Thus, the paper has many best practices that improve performance by just choosing the proper way to implement a cube.

Boyan Penev announced the availability of DateStream project on CodePlex: it is a data feed that can be consumed by PowerPivot but also to generate a calendar table for any type of usage. Yes, Analysis Services has a wizard, but when you are in a hurry why not simply consume a ready to go data source? In fact, this data feed is published for free ...

I've written here before about Data Education, the training company I recently launched, building off my previous company Boston SQL Training. Things have moved along quickly, and I and the rest of the Data Education staff are very happy to announce a jam-packed fall and winter course roster. We'll be announcing even more classes later in the ...

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, you cannot import the attribute key value. Only the attribute name is included in the ...

The Analysis Services team just posted a blog entry with a few useful links to jumpstart your experience with Tabular project in Analysis Services ''Denali''. In these early days I read several messages asking for clarification about the names and acronyms used in Denali. For a complete description I suggest you to read the Analysis Services - ...