PROLOGIKA BLOG · IDEAS FROM THE FIELD
Practical perspectives on Microsoft Fabric, Power BI, semantic models, and the work of turning data into insight.
Explore the latest articlesThis is a big topic and frankly it's too ambitious on my part to tackle it. Assuming equivalent multidimensional (BISM Multidimensional) and tabular (BISM Tabular) models, I was curious how a multidimensional cube fares against VertiPaq in terms of performance. To be fair to VertiPaq, I decided to use native DAX queries. As you've probably heard, BISM Tabular in SQL Denali will include a variant…
Read articleI had some fun lately setting up a Reporting Services farm of two SSRS 2008 R2 nodes and a hardware load balancer. We followed the steps in BOL only to find out that the report server will return sporadic empty pages or MAC viewstate validation errors although the machine key was identical on both servers. We fixed the issues by: Enabling sticky sessions in the…
Read articleMicrosoft published release notes for PowerPivot and SQL Server Denali Community Technology Preview (CTP) 3 Release Notes. This means that the CTP3 release is imminent although the download link is not live yet. The release notes cover the new features pretty well. UPDATE 7/12/2011 CTP3 got released today.
Read articleI am partnering with Data Education to deliver an intensive five-day onsite class on Analysis Services and PowerPivot. The class will be held September 19-23 at the Microsoft Technology Center in Boston. The class doesn't assume any experience with Analysis Services. We'll start from zero and build a multidimensional cube sharing along the way as many as best practices as possible. More information about the…
Read articleUDM scope assignments are incredible useful because they let you write to the cube space, such as to implement custom aggregation, allocations, currency conversion, data calculations, and so on. Unfortunately, scope assignments have limitations. One of them is that more complicated scope expressions result in "an arbitrary shape of the sets is not allowed in the current context" error. Recently, I tried to use a…
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We had a blast light night at Atlanta BI and ran out of space with a record attendance of some 60+ people. This is phenomenal given that we are amidst a vacationing season. Jonathan Lacefield from Daugherty gave us a great intro presentation of Analysis Services. Michael Clifford shows cool Integration Services tips. And, Beth Lenoir from Daugherty was kind to sponsor to event and…
Read articleParent-child dimensions are a very useful feature of Analysis Services to model recursive hierarchies, such as an organizational hierarchy. Recently, I had to apply dimension data security to a parent-child dimension. The allowed set expression used the factless fact table approach (see my Protect UDM with Dimension Data Security article for more details), as follows (translated to the Adventure Works schema): IIF -- check if…
Read articleIf you have worked with Analysis Services dimension data security for a while, you know that MDX allowed/denied set expressions can become rather complex. You might be tempted to externalize these expressions in the cube script for brevity or reusability reasons. For example, you might decide to add a calculated member that returns a list of allowed partners that the user is authorized to see…
Read articleAll TechEd 2011 breakout sessions are available online on MSDN Channel9 website. Here the links to mine: Top 10 Reasons to Upgrade to Microsoft SQL Server 2008/R2 Reporting Services Can Your BI Solution Scale? Enjoy and vote!
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While I've been busy at TechEd talking to BI enthusiasts, professionals and wannabes and delivering sessions, the news is out about the new BI roadmap and BISM positioning. See: T.K. Anand blog T.K. Anand & Ashvini Sharma recorded session What's New in Microsoft SQL Server Code-Named "Denali" for SQL Server Analysis Services and PowerPivot"? Sean Boon, Carolyn Chao, and Sabrena McBride recorded session Abundantly "Crescent":…
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