As SQL Server 2012 and PowerPivot v2 release is getting closer and closer, knowing DAX becomes more of a necessity than a just an option. Via Kasper de Jonge ’s blog I had learned of a nice 30 minutes Introduction to DAX basics . You can download an example workbook and try your hand at creating a measure formula and adding up to adding filter context to your formula. The post also had a ling to the TechNet Wiki page for the DAX Resource Center which has loads of articles, downloads and videos, along...

I was in the BI User Group meeting today (and if you're in Israel, why didn't you come too?) and heard something quite exciting. The speaker was Yossi Elkayam from Microsoft Israel and what he mentioned twice was that the release date for SQL Server 2012 Denali is March 2012. He was saying that while stating next month's meeting will preview the new release scheduled for the month after that. He also mentioned that PowerPivot version 2 will be released in proximity to the release of SQL...

יוסי אלקיים, מבין שאנשי IT לפעמים לא תמיד יודעים איך לענות על דרישה עסקית פשוטה בעולם ה-BI. סקירה של הפתרונות השונים בתחום שיעזרו לכם להציג תוצאה טובה וגם כלי שימושי שיסדר לכם את היום...

Problem : when playing with PowerPivot and adding  ∑Values you get the prefix Sum(…) before the value. Solution : 1.Click on the dropdown combo on the right hand. 2. Click on Edit Measure. 3.Copy the Formula in the “Measure will use this formula” … 4.Click on the New Measure icon in the Power Pivot Ribbon 5.paste the formula to the measure settings and change the measure name. 6. That’s it. now you have a new calculated member with your own caption ( Alias or what ever) Enjoy it!!!

TechEd North America 2011 wrapped up last week with big news about PowerPivot and SSAS. Just in case you haven't read it already somewhere else, I'll give you a very short re-cap. In SQL Server 2005, the UDM was supposed to encapsulate the solution for modeling your project. In SQL Server 11, codename Denali, it's going to be replaced by BISM - the Business Intelligence Semantic Model. All the reporting tools in the Microsoft BI Stack will work against this model. In Denali, you will...

A bit more information regarding the new CALCULATE function in DAX. I’ve described what this function does in a previous post , and I want to expand on how to treat this function in a PowerPivot report. Consider the following report:     We have Order Quantity sales ([Order Quantity Total]) and two calculated measures, which we are going to discuss shortly. We have the promotions dimension in the Y axix and 2 slicers: Product Category Name and Calendar Year. The DAX syntax for the calculated...

I’m getting more and more involved in designing PowerPivot models and want to share a bit of DAX tips in the coming posts. I’ve already touched on DAX in previous posts and in this post I’d like to discuss the new CALCULATE and CALCULATETABLE functions and their uses in a model. DAX is a powerful expression language and one of its main differences from the expression language we know in Excel is the fact that we can reference entire tables rather than cells in a spreadsheet. When we need to look...

One cannot ignore the focus Microsoft puts on the Sharepoint platform as of the past couple of years. The  Sharepoint product is, in fact, the best server-side product seller for Microsoft ever . I did not fully realize the importance of this platform until recently, when I was attending the “Data Platform” conference several months ago and went to hear Mr. Donald Farmer. Mr. Farmer said that the new workforce, used to network and collaborate using Facebook and Twitter is expecting to find the...

Ok, so the unexpected happened - about a month and a half after interviewing Mr. Donald Farmer , I got to interview Mr. Amir Netz and Mr. Ariel Netz ! I know!... You probably remember Mr. Amir Netz from his appearance in the recent keynote session in the BI conference in New Orleans. He spoke about what's going to be new in PowerPivot. When I heard he was coming to Israel for a conference discussing Panorama and PowerPivot , I decided I'd try to get a few more tidbits from him... In the keynote...

Two big resources on SQL Server 2008 R2 and PowerPivot just came out lately. The first is the videos and slides from BI track in TechEd 2010 in New Orleans. You can download all the slides and video recordings on the sessions that you want (and you can use the "list" view for quick and easy access). This one is free for everyone. Another resource that is free, but requires registration, is 24 Hours of PASS . Registration to PASS is free and very recommended as it gives you access to a lot...