A lightweight editor for SSAS Tabular Models built in .NET / WinForms Tabular Editor A lightweight editor for SSAS Tabular Models built in .NET / WinForms

About me... Senior Business Analytics Architect @ www.kapacity.dk SQL Server, Azure and MS BI fanatic for 10+ years C# hacker in my spare time Author of Tabular Editor https://tabulareditor.github.io/ Husband and father of two Glider pilot Twitter: @Dotykier - Tabular Editor release announcements!

About Tabular Editor Tabular Model CL1200+ offline editor experience – alternative to Visual Studio Can be used with Power BI models as well (although unsupported by Microsoft – but that is going to change soon ) Lightweight standalone tool - all dependencies included in installer (3 MB download) WinForms application (lol – oldschool!) written in C# .NET 4.6 Open Source on GitHub under MIT license Active development since August 2016 ~2000 unique downloads (version 2.7.2 and 2.7.3) New release roughly every other month Closed more than 150 issues requested by the community Contributions more than welcome! (Code, wiki, etc…) …and it’s free!!! (I’m really bad at doing business, I guess…)

”There are no doubts that Tabular Editor is the more productive editor for Analysis Services Tabular models.” - Marco Russo @ sqlbi.com

Let’s see why… Demo time! https://github.com/otykier/TabularEditor/wiki/Getting-Started https://github.com/otykier/TabularEditor/wiki/Features-at-a-glance

Tabular Editor – Advanced Features Import Table Best Practice Analyzer Advanced Filtering options C# scripting ”Go to definition” Custom Actions Navigate back/forward Command Line Build and Deployment DAX keyword lookup Compatibility Level 1400 features Changing DAX locale Detail Rows expressions Object Level Security ”Save to folder” serialisation M expressions (no Power Query UI ) Deployment and TMSL scripting https://github.com/otykier/TabularEditor/wiki/Advanced-features

Understanding LINQ and the TOM TOM = Tabular Object Model LINQ = Language INtegrated Query Standard in .NET Used for Scripting, BPA and Filtering in Tabular Editor Operations on collections of objects: .Where(x => true/false) – returns filtered collection .Select(x => y) – returns collection of y .Any(x => true/false) – returns true/false .ToList().ForEach(x => { … }) – apply operation to all Collections in Tabular Editor can be: Model.Tables Model.Tables["Reseller Sales"].Columns Selected.Measures etc.

What can you do with scripting? Generate documentation Batch changes Auto-generate measures (for example, Time Intelligence, SWITCH logic, etc.) Master Model Pattern Sky is the limit…

Tabular Editor for Teams of developers Before you start: Each team member has own development database Decide on serialisation preferences (i.e. on which ”parts” of the model will developers be working simultaneously?) Workflow: Fetch from version control (preferably GIT) – resolve merge conflicts (if any) Open Tabular Editor. Load from folder and deploy to development database Connect Tabular Editor to development database – makes it easier to apply changes (just hit Ctrl+S) When satisfied with the changes: File > Save to folder… Commit to version control (Optional) Set up CI/CD using Tabular Editors commandline build and deployment

Tabular Editor - Roadmap Better UI for visualizing tables and relationships Especially suited for large models (100+ tables) Offline DAX syntax checking and data type inference DAX IntelliSense Better support for calculated tables Better DAX dependency resolution and formula fix-up Scripting using CSX (same as C# but better suited for scripting) Support for Power BI Composite Models and Aggregations (when Power BI XMLA endpoints are opened up)

Thank you!