1. 45 Minutes to Your First Tabular Model
Kerry L. Tyler
SQL Saturday #389
Huntington Beach

2. About Me Recovering Sysadmin
Ten years of data—Varying degrees of SQL Server Engine & BI
Currently Senior BI Developer/Consultant with Aptera Software
Used to fly little airplanes
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| SQL Saturday #389 SNA

3. Actually creating a Tabular Model only takes about 20 minutes
Spoiler Alert!
Actually creating a Tabular Model only takes about 20 minutes
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| SQL Saturday #389 SNA

4. Agenda Terminology What is Tabular? Advantages/ Disadvantages Demo
Power Pivot
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5. Terminology BISM: Business Intelligence Semantic Model SSAS Tabular
All the old stuff…
…Plus all of the new stuff
SSAS Tabular
SSAS has two modes: Tabular & Multidimensional
xVelocity (Vertipaq)
The in-memory/compression engine used by SSAS Tabular
Shared with Power Pivot
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6. What is this “Tabular” Thing, Anyway?
It’s only a little like “regular” Multidimensional SSAS…mostly different
Different engine
Columnar Storage
Compression
In-Memory or DirectQuery
DAX or MDX
Power Pivot
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7. Where Does it Fit?
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8. What’s So Great About It?
Pic courtesy NASA Dryden Armstrong
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9. Tabular Advantages It’s fast (xVelocity) Quick development process
Works [a little] better on top of non-Star Schema than Multidimensional does
Doesn’t use “standard” Star Schema terms
DAX has lighter learning curve than MDX
Upgrade path from Power Pivot
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10. Tabular…other things Security KPIs Partitions
Replacement for Report Models
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11. Tabular Disadvantages
Hardware needs
“Missing” Features
No in-model M2M
No Data Mining
DirectQuery mode only understands DAX
Still no column-level security
Requires separate SSAS Instance
BI or Enterprise SKUs only
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12. When/Where is it Used? Power View (in Excel) Power BI
Business Analysts for “Personal” or “Team” BI
Proofs of Concept
Where you want it fast!
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13. Let’s Build One SSAS Tabular or Power Pivot?
Using part of Adventure Works DW
Step-by-Step Development
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14. Calculations Calculated Columns Calculated Fields (Measures)
Use when operating on data in a single row
Won’t change regardless of slicing done in client tool
Calculated Fields (Measures)
Math (aggregations) done across multiple rows
Calculated as-needed based on slicing of data
Multidimensional could/would store aggregations for these
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15. Power Pivot
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16. Now What? Try it; you may like it…
It does not replace Multidimensional Cubes
(unless you are doing PowerBI…)
Experiment with DAX formulas
Great place to start if you haven’t had time to dive into SSAS Multidimensional
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17. Resources (v. brief list)
Installing SSAS in Tabular Mode:
Rob Collie’s website:
Also Rob’s Book (click on “The Book”)
Many-to-Many whitepaper:
Large Scale Tabular (Marco & Alberto)
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18. Questions?
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19. Contact
Kerry L. Tyler Blog:
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