1. 45 Minutes to Your First Tabular Model
Kerry L. Tyler
SQL Saturday #410
Chattanooga

2. About Me Recovering Sysadmin
Ten years of data—Varying degrees of SQL Server Engine & BI
Currently Senior BI Developer/Consultant in Nashville
Used to fly little airplanes
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06/27/2015
| SQL Saturday #410 CHA

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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06/27/2015
| SQL Saturday #410 CHA

4. Agenda Terminology What is Tabular? Advantages/ Disadvantages Demo
Power Pivot
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| SQL Saturday #410 CHA

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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| SQL Saturday #410 CHA

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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| SQL Saturday #410 CHA

7. Where Does it Fit?
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| SQL Saturday #410 CHA

8. What’s So Great About It?
Pic courtesy NASA Dryden Armstrong
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| SQL Saturday #410 CHA

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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| SQL Saturday #410 CHA

10. Tabular Disadvantages
Hardware needs
“Missing” Features
No in-model M2M (but wait!)
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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| SQL Saturday #410 CHA

11. 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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| SQL Saturday #410 CHA

12. Let’s Build One SSAS Tabular or Power Pivot?
Using part of Adventure Works DW
Step-by-Step Development
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| SQL Saturday #410 CHA

13. 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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| SQL Saturday #410 CHA

14. Power Pivot
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15. Now What? Try it; you may like it…your power users will!
It does not replace Multidimensional Cubes
Experiment with DAX formulas
Great place to start if you haven’t had time to dive into SSAS Multidimensional
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| SQL Saturday #410 CHA

16. 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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| SQL Saturday #410 CHA

17. Questions?
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18. Contact
Kerry L. Tyler Blog:
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| SQL Saturday #410 CHA