Implementing Conditional Formatting in Tabular

/0 Comments/in /by

As I mentioned here and here, Marco and I teamed up to invigorate the DAX Editor with some new features. Today we officially released the latest updates and published in to the Visual Studio Gallery. The easiest way to install is to do it directly from Visual Studio/SSDT:

  1. In Visual Studio 2010, 2012, or 2013, go to Tools->Extensions and Updates.
  2. Click the Online tab and search for “dax” or “dax editor”. Note that if you use Visual Studio 2013, you need to make a configuration change in devenv.exe.config that I explained here.

040715_0137_Implementin1

In the second post, I’ve mentioned that I’ve added the option to inject some custom MDX script in the Tabular script, such as to set up default members. You can also use the custom script to implement conditional formatting – a feature that Tabular doesn’t support natively. Suppose that you want to change the front color of the measure Products with Negative Stock to Red when it’s above zero.

040715_0137_Implementin2

The following scope assignment in DAX Editor gets the job done:

 

— MDX SCRIPT —

       SCOPE( Measures.AllMembers );

              IF Measures.CurrentMember IS [Measures].[Products with Negative Stock] AND [Measures].[Products with Negative Stock] > 0 Then

                     FORE_COLOR(THIS) = 255

              End If; 

       END SCOPE;

— MDX SCRIPT ––

 

The more convoluted syntax in this case is because [Products with Negative Stock] is a calculated member. If it was a regular measure, the scope assignment could be simplified:

 

— MDX SCRIPT —

       SCOPE({[Measures].[Products with Negative Stock]});

              FORE_COLOR(THIS) = Iif (Measures.CurrentMember > 0, 255, 0);

       END SCOPE;

— MDX SCRIPT ––

 

Yet, another way to do it is to define the measure using MDX thanks to the fact that everything defined between the “–MDX SCRIPT –” placeholders is carried verbatim to the cube script. We can say that that’s another DAX Editor feature especially if you need MDX features that are not supported in DAX, such as hierarchy navigation (ANCESTOR, DESCENDANTS, etc.) or KPIs.

— MDX SCRIPT —

    CREATE MEMBER CURRENTCUBE.[Measures].[Products with Negative Stock 1] AS <some calculation>, FORE_COLOR = IIF([Measures].[Products with Negative Stock 1] > 0, 255 /*Red*/, 0 /*Black*/);

— MDX SCRIPT –-

You got the idea. You can stuff in any valid MDX statement that Multidimensional supports in the cube script.

DAX Editor Adds Support for Tabular Default Members

/0 Comments/in /by

UPDATE 4/24/2019   The new JSON-based Tabular schema doesn’t support extensions so Tabular Editor and BI Developer Extensions (BIDS) won’t work.

In my previous blog, I announced a few new features for DAX Editor for Tabular. Today, I checked in another change that adds support for default members. Currently, Tabular doesn’t have UI for defining default members. However, you can define default members in the MdxScript section of the BIM file using MDX syntax just like you can do so in Multidimensional.

031915_0156_DAXEditorAd1

The only issue is that if you make a change to any Tabular calculated measure in the designer, SSDT will regenerate the script and your manual changes will be lost. That is unless you use DAX Editor as its support for default members keeps them in the script. As a disclaimer, I took the backdoor approach for defining the default member syntax. The right approach would be to build upon the wonderful work of Nickolai Medveditskov and check the default member syntax so DAX Editor catches syntax errors as you type and when you attempt to save the measures. But that would have required a lot of work with Managed Babel. Moreover, the next version of SQL Server might support default members natively so all this work could be wasted.

So, I’ve decided to implement default members by allowing you to define a custom MDX script section in the *.dax file that is carried verbatim to the Tabular model without any syntax checking or changes. Of course, if you make an error, e.g. reference a column that doesn’t exist or use wrong syntax, you’ll find this pretty quickly when you attempt to open the *.bim file. To fix this, check your syntax in DAX Editor and save the changes to the *.bim file again. Or, open the *.bim file source and remove the custom MDX script which you’ll find inside the <MdxScript> element.

The syntax for default members is simple:

  1. In the DAX file, add the following section at the top of the file. It actually can appear anywhere but I’d typically put it on top when working with cube scripts.

    — MDX SCRIPT —

    ALTER Cube CurrentCube Update Dimension [Product].[Is Finished Goods], Default_Member = [Product].[Is Finished Goods].&[TRUE];

    ALTER Cube CurrentCube Update Dimension [Currency].[Currency Code], Default_Member = [Currency].[Currency Code].&[USD];

    — MDX SCRIPT —

IMPORTANT Notice that the script block has to be enclosed with “— MDX SCRIPT –” comments exactly as they appear in the example. DAX Editor looks for this pair of comments to identify the custom script block.

  1. Inside the comments, enter ALTER CUBE statements to set the default members using MDX syntax as you would do it in Multidimensional cube scripts. Notice the MDX UniqueMember syntax for the Default_Member property. In this case, I set two default members. Specifically, the Is Finished Goods column in the Product table is set to the TRUE member () and the Currency Code column in the Currency table is set to USD.
  2. Click the “Save Measures to BIM File” button in the DAX Editor Toolbar to apply the DAX Editor changes to the *.bim file as usual.

031915_0156_DAXEditorAd2

I haven’t tested it yet but you should be able to add other MDX script commands to the DAX Editor script, such as KPI definitions, which DAX Editor doesn’t currently support.

Enjoy!

DAX Editor New Features

/0 Comments/in /by

UPDATE 4/24/2019   The new JSON-based Tabular schema doesn’t support extensions so Tabular Editor and BI Developer Extensions (BIDS) won’t work.

As it stands, Tabular (versions 2012 and 2014) doesn’t have the equivalent of a cube script. Instead, the developer has to use the Measures grid to maintain DAX calculated measures. This is OK with a few measures but as the number of measures grows, the development experience suffers because it’s getting harder to locate these measures. Besides, every time you make a change, you need to wait for the Tabular environment to refresh which gets annoying quickly. However, you can use the DAX Editor community sample to simulate a Tabular script. DAX Editor allows you to extract all measures from a Tabular model and maintain them outside the model in a DAX file. DAX Editor was initially developed by Microsoft (kudos to Nickolai Medveditskov).

Marco Russo and I teamed up to add some new features to DAX Editor as follows:

  1. Support of Visible and Description properties. Although only Power View supports field descriptions (Excel doesn’t), entering user-friendly descriptions allows you to implement self-documented models. For example, you can get a list of all measures and descriptions from the $SYSTEM.MDSCHEMA_MEASURES DMVs. The following example shows you how to use Visible and Description properties:

    CREATE MEASURE ‘Internet Sales'[Internet Distinct Count Sales Order]=DISTINCTCOUNT([Sales Order Number]) CALCULATION PROPERTY NumberWhole Visible=False ThousandSeparator=True Format=’#,0′ Description=’Returns unique number of sales orders’;

 Notice that even if don’t want to overwrite the measure format, you still have to specify the default General format so that DAX Editor can parse the syntax:

CREATE MEASURE ‘Internet Sales'[Internet Distinct Count Sales Order]=DISTINCTCOUNT([Sales Order Number]) CALCULATION PROPERTY General Visible=False Description=’Returns unique number of sales orders’;  

     2.   Support of Visual Studio 2013 although it requires a workaround to fix the bindings for the Microsoft.VisualStudio.Package.LanguageService.* dlls. Specifically, you need to modify the VS 2013 devenv.config (C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 12.0\Common7\IDE\devenv.exe.config) as follows:

<dependentAssembly>

       <assemblyIdentity name=“Microsoft.VisualStudio.Package.LanguageService.11.0“ publicKeyToken=“b03f5f7f11d50a3a“ culture=“neutral“/>

       <bindingRedirect oldVersion=“2.0.0.0-11.0.0.0“ newVersion=“11.0.0.0“/>

</dependentAssembly>

<dependentAssembly>

       <assemblyIdentity name=“Microsoft.VisualStudio.Package.LanguageService.10.0“ publicKeyToken=“b03f5f7f11d50a3a“ culture=“neutral“/>

       <bindingRedirect oldVersion=“2.0.0.0-11.0.0.0“ newVersion=“10.0.0.0“/>

</dependentAssembly>

We still have some outstanding work to test and make the binaries available for download and on Visual Studio Extension Gallery. Meanwhile, you can get the latest source (build 42258 as of now) and build it as follows:

  1. Install Visual Studio 2010 (C#) and the Visual Studio 2010 SDK. You must use Visual Studio 2010 to open the DAX Editor source as Visual Studio 2012 and above will upgrade the project.
  2. Open the DAX Editor source in Visual Studio 2010 and build the project.
  3. If you use Visual Studio 2013, fix the bindings as I explained above.
  4. Double-click the DaxEditor.vsix in the bin/debug folder and associated with the desired versions of Visual Studio you have on your machine.

The next thing on my list is to add support for Tabular default members and KPIs. The usual disclaimer applies that the sample is not supported and its features might not work with future editions of SQL Server. Other than this, enjoy it and I hope you find it useful as I do with my current projects.

 

Power BI vNext SSAS Connector and Security Reloaded

/0 Comments/in /by

To follow up on my previous post on the same subject, a customer was eager to jump on the Power BI->On Prem SSAS bandwagon and try the simplified security model. But “omne initium difficile est” (every beginning is difficult). Their SSAS server was installed on a domain acme.com while their e-mail addresses were using a different scheme, e.g. user@contoso.com, although both server and accounts were under the same acme domain. As we’ve quickly found out, Active Directory had an issue with this setup which manifested with the following error in the SQL Server Profiler connected to SSAS.

“The following system error occurred: The name provided is not a properly formed account name.”

If you see this error, follow these steps to confirm the issue:

  1. Remote in to your SSAS server.
  2. Open Command Prompt and enter:
    Whoami/upn
  3. If you see that your login domain name is different that the e-mail you use to sign up to Power BI, you’ll have the same issue. For example, your e-mail address might be user@contoso.com while whoami might show user@acme.com.

The workaround is to bridge the two identity schemes by adding an alternative UPN suffix in Active Directory Users and Trusts, as Greg Galloway explained here. This of course will require help from your AD administrator (one of the most important persons to befriend on your BI quest) so some coercing is to be expected.

Thanks to Jen Underwood, Will Thompson, Mini Nair and Giri Nair from Microsoft who helped us troubleshoot the issue.

Projecting a Scalar Value with DAX EVALUATE Queries

/0 Comments/in /by

When you work on more complicated DAX measures, you should get out of the Power Pivot or BISM design environment and use the excellent DAXStudio (or SSMS) with the EVALUATE query syntax. But then eventually the measure would return a scalar value while EVALUATE requires a table. You can use the DAX ROW function to create a single-row, single-column table, and then show the result using EVALUATE.

030415_1409_Projectinga1

Power BI vNext SSAS Connector and Security

/0 Comments/in /by

As you’ve probably heard, Power BI vNext will allow you to keep your data on premises in SSAS MD and Tabular data models while your reports in the cloud can connect to these data models on premises. Currently, the Analysis Services connector support only Tabular models while plans for MD have been announced as well. Currently, SSAS understand Windows security only and you might wonder what needs to be put in place for security to work.

Interestingly, if your users have used their work e-mail addresses to sign up for Power BI and your company is using Active Directory, you don’t need do synchronize your AD with Azure using DirSync. That’s because Power BI will pass the user identity on the connection string using the EffectiveUserName property. Consequently, connectivity and data security will work as usual. On the other hand, if users used an .onmicrosoft.com e-mail address, DirSync is required. Microsoft explains this in more details in the “Why you might need use DirSync to connect to an on-premises Analysis Services Server” document.

While this definitely simplifies the effort to get Windows security working, it doesn’t help if custom security, such as Forms Authentication, is required, such as to integrate Power BI with custom applications. Embedding Power BI reports on custom applications and supporting custom security are on the Power BI top wish list and I hope Microsoft will support this scenario soon as well.

About Gartner Magic Quadrant 2015 for BI

/0 Comments/in /by

The 2005 Gartner Magic Quadrant is out and according to Gartner, the distance between Tableau and the other leaders is widening. Here is the full report. It’s obvious that Gartner focuses only on the self-service aspect of BI and throws away the entire gamut of tools required to deliver successful BI solutions, including RDBMS, ETL, data models, MDM, etc. But even if we focus on self-service BI, I don’t quite agree with Gartner’s infatuation with Tableau (see my blog “Top 10 Reasons for Choosing Microsoft Self-service BI”). It’s a good visualization tool but based on what I hear, people tend to overestimate its capabilities and get in trouble. Nevertheless, for the most part I agree with the Gartner’s assessment related to Microsoft BI cautions, except:

1. “Microsoft had the highest percentage of customer references citing absent or weak functionality (for example, no drill-through capabilities in Power View) as a platform problem.”

Really? The other vendors have more functionality? Can Tableau import multiple datasets, transform data, have Q&A, scale, share and discover datasets, or have data governance? And, that percentage is probably high, because the percentage of customers using Microsoft BI is high.

2. “However, customers may have difficulty finding external resources with experience in the newer Power BI stack, which requires a different set of skills and expertise than Microsoft’s sweet spot of systems-of-record, developer-focused BI deployments.”

The Power BI stack shouldn’t require that much knowledge.

A successful BI strategy should be much more than just “putting lipstick on a pig”. No matter how nice the lipstick is, it’s still a pig. However, the Gartner’s summary of the Microsoft weaknesses is spot on:

“Microsoft is attempting to address many of these limitations in the forthcoming stand-alone version of Power BI, which does not require Office 2013 or an Office 365 subscription and can access Analysis Services structures and content without physically moving underlying enterprise data to the cloud.”

I’m looking forward to the 2016 quadrant. For now, I like better the Forester Research report (http://www.forrester.com/pimages/rws/reprints/document/115485/oid/1-RN6A25).

022515_0242_AboutGartne1

Fixing Power View to SQL Server 2014 SSAS Multidimensional

/0 Comments/in /by

Scenario: You have Power View integrated with SharePoint. You attempt to create a Power View report that connects to a SQL Server 2014 cube. The connection fails with “Internal Error: An unexpected exception has occurred”. The connection used to work or works with SQL Server 2012 SSAS MD.

Resolution: On the SSAS 2014 server, install Cumulative Update 2 for SQL Server 2014. This article provides more details about the issue.

Top 10 Reasons for Choosing Microsoft Self-service BI

/0 Comments/in /by

Every organization should have a strategy for self-service BI. As a rule of thumb, my advice is that 80% of the BI effort should be directed toward implementing organizational BI solutions (DW, ETL, data model, dashboards, big data, predictive analytics, and so on), while 20% should be left for completing self-service BI analytics. But which tool to choose for self-service BI? With so many vendors on the market, it’s easy to get persuaded by marketing propaganda and eye candy. My advice would be to start with what you already have. And, what you have is probably Excel. It’s common when I talk to clients to find that they don’t realize that the most if not all of their self-service BI needs can be met by the Excel self-service BI capabilities, many of which are unmatched by the competition.

Microsoft has built a comprehensive self-service ecosystem marketed under the Power BI name umbrella that should warrant your serious interest for at least the following reasons:

Flexible Data Schema

Unlike other tools that are limited to importing a single dataset, Power Pivot allows you to import and relate multiple datasets so your business users can build sophisticated models on a par with organizational BI solutions.

Easy Data Acquisition

Unlike other vendors who assume programming and scripting knowledge for data import, importing data with Microsoft self-service BI adopts a wizard-driven approach for importing data. In fact, in Excel business users have several ways to bring data into the data model depending on the data complexity, including Excel native data import (great for working with text files), Power Pivot (great for working with relational and other data sources), and Power Query (even more data sources). Currently, the preferred approach for best performance is to cache the data into the state-of-the art xVelocity in-memory store, but Microsoft is adding pass-through query capabilities as well.

Data Transformation

I don’t think that there is a self-service tool on the market that allows you to transform the data before it’s imported. By contrast, Power Query to Microsoft self-service BI is what SSIS is to organizational BI. Power Query supports a variety of data transformation tasks, ranging from simple tasks, such as combining and splitting columns, to a full-featured M language for advanced transformations.

Powerful Programming Language

A BI solution is rarely complete without business calculations that can range from simple aggregations to rather sophisticated business metrics. The Data Analysis Expressions (DAX) is a full-featured analytical language that you’ll be hard-pressed to find in competing products.

Flexible Reporting

With a few clicks, business users familiar with Excel can use build Excel PivotTable and PivotChart reports connected to the Power Pivot data model. If you need more eye candy, Power View should help. While you might find that the current presentation toolset has left a room for improvement, check what’s coming up in Power BI vNext.

Performance and Scaling

Most popular self-service BI vendors offer desktop-based solutions that import data in files. When it comes to scaling out, these vendors fell short. By contrast, an organization that has adopted Microsoft self-service BI can easily scale out data models originated by Business to enterprise data models powered by Analysis Services and sanctioned by IT.

Q&A

Your users don’t know how to get started with the BI model someone else built? Everyone loves the Power BI Q&A feature that lets users type semantic questions, such as “show me sales for last quarter”. None of the popular self-service BI vendors have currently a similar feature, although it looks like startups, such as ThoughtSpot, are rallying to offer similar offering.

Flexible Deployment

Don’t use Excel or Office 365? Have SharePoint on premises or cloud? Don’t have or care about SharePoint? The coming Power BI vNext (free and paid versions) and Power BI Designer removes adoption barriers by allowing you to implement self-service BI outside Excel and SharePoint. My newsletter on this subject provides more details.

 

Cloud on Your Terms

If you are looking for a cloud-based BI platform, Power BI is just that. And, with Power BI vNext you don’t have to upload your data. Data can stay on premises, such as in a Tabular model or a cube, while your reports can be deployed to the cloud. Moreover, you are always up-to-date with the latest features.

Great Partner Ecosystem

One of the greatest strengths of Microsoft is having a great partner ecosystem and readily available talent.

Cost

OK, that’s the 11th reason but it’s hard to pass free given that the Power tools (Power Pivot, Power Query, Power View, and Power Map) are either bundled with Excel or available for download) and Power BI vNext cloud offering has a free Power BI Designer and a free cloud edition.

While Microsoft self-service BI is not perfect, it should warrant your interest if you are on the market looking for a tool. Sometimes, all we need to do is appreciate what we already have.

 

Introducing the Reimagined Power BI Platform

/0 Comments/in /by

Come and join us for an information-packed meeting of the Atlanta Microsoft BI Group on February 23th. You will learn about Power BI vNext and Panorama Necto. Our sponsor will be Panorama.

  1. Introducing the Reimagined Power BI Platform by Jen Underwood, Microsoft
    You have seen glimpses of the new Power BI platform during the Public Preview reveal. Although it may not be apparent, Microsoft has totally reimagined the Power BI platform and user experience for BI professionals, developers and business users. In this new release, Microsoft has added Power BI Designer, developer APIs, custom templates/apps, hybrid direct connectivity to on-premise data sources without data copying, a native mobile BI app and other top secret enhancements that we can dive into by the time of this session. Please join me to further explore all these great changes and enjoy a fun demo-intensive session.
  2. Panorama Necto – Panorama Necto is advancing Business Intelligence 3.0 to the next level, bringing together the very best of Enterprise BI with Visual Data Discovery, providing enterprises with new ways to collaborate and create unique contextual connections.