1. DAX and the tabular model
Steve Simon MVP SQL Server BI

2. SQL Server MVP
Atrion Networking Corporation (Providence RI)
Involved with database design for 31 years +
Presenter at numerous PASS summits.
Presenter at numerous SQL Saturday events.
Contributor on SQLShack.com
Blogger on SQL Server central

3. Critical factors that should be analyzed prior to opting for the model.

4. Why the Tabular Model Who are my target users?
What is the format of their data?
How do my users like to view their data?
How must my information be rendered?

5. Tabular Model vs. Power Pivot
Power Pivot still has limitations 2GB
Tabular models have partitions, which are used to manage processing of large data volumes. Power Pivot does not.
Tabular models support ‘DirectQuery’. You can consider DirectQuery almost as a scaling feature as it allows you to avoid processing large data volumes altogether. In Memory.

6. Why the Tabular Model
Tabular models can be secured using row security.
Tabular models live in the Visual Studio shell and you may use the DAX editor.
PowerPivot lives in the Excel environment, thus it is limited to the extensibility model that is provided with Excel.

8. Getting data into our tabular model

9. How do we load our data SQL Server Data Tools Power Pivot
Loading from Access
Loading from Analysis Services.

10. Looking at our data in our relational tables

11. Our relational data source

13. SQL Server Data Tools: Our entry point

14. SSDT 2010

26. From the table
Calculated Fields
Measures

27. You may even wish to work by quarter
Complex calculated field

28. Demo
Our Project

29. Reporting from Excel via Power Pivot

32. Demo 1

33. DAX Queries and SSMS

39. Analysis Services Demo 2
DAX Query
Analysis Services Demo 2

40. Reporting

42. How did we get there?

45. SSRS QUERY AND REPORT Demo 3

46. DAX Queries with the flexibility of SSMS

48. DAX Queries with the flexibility of SSMS
Demo 4

49. Take-Away

50. Going with a tabular model
Requires much thought and planning.
Requires a change of mind set.
Requires users buy in and consideration of how they wish to view their data.
More importantly, the need to use the model, must be there.

51. We can.. Prove out the validity of our results with T-SQL.
Reporting Services requires us treating DAX code as ‘mining code’.
Have the flexibility to allow users to extract their data easily from within Excel.
Learning and work with DAX is a challenge as is MDX.

52. Will the tabular model replace the multidimensional model, I believe that the jury is still out on this one.

53. DAX and the tabular model
Questions
Steve Simon MVP SQL Server BI