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

2. 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
Husband and father of two
Glider pilot
- Tabular Editor release announcements!

3. 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 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…)

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

5. Let’s see why… Demo time!

6. 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

7. 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.

8. 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…

9. 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

10. 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)

11. Thank you!