Tag: SQL Server Analysis Services

Power BI, Power BI Desktop

Quick Tips: Find Power BI Desktop Local Port Number with Model Explorer

Quick Tips: Find Power BI Desktop Local Port Number with Model Explorer

In March 2018, I wrote a blogpost called Four Different Ways to Find Your Power BI Desktop Local Port Number. Last week, Zoe Doughlas from Microsoft left a comment reminding me of a fifth method to get the port which encouraged me to write this quick tip. Thanks to Zoe!

As the name suggests, the blog was about finding Power BI Desktop’s local port number. If you do not have any clue what I mean by local port number, I strongly suggest reading that blog.

This blog focuses on yet another method that wasn’t available back then. Indeed, it is a new feature added to the October 2023 release of Power BI Desktop. This is a Quick Tip so let’s jump straight to the topic and learn how we find the port number (and more) in Power BI Desktop (Oct 2023 and later releases).

Prerequisites

As mentioned, this new feature was added to Power BI Desktop’s October 2023; therefore, we must install that release on our local machine. Indeed, the October 2023 release was packed with many other features, including the Model Explorer (the topic of this blog) and the ability to define calculation groups directly in Power BI Desktop. Many of these features are still in preview; hence, they require enabling.

The following few steps explain how to enable Preview Features in Power BI Desktop:

  1. Open Power BI Desktop and click Settings (the gear icon) from the right pane
  2. On the Options page, from the GLOBAL section, click the Preview features tab
  3. Enable the desired features; for this blog, we need the Model explorer and Calculation group authoring
  4. Click OK

The following image shows the above steps:

Enabling Preview Features in Power BI Desktop
Enabling Preview Features in Power BI Desktop

Depending on the selected features, you may need to restart your Power BI Desktop to allow them to enable.

Looking at the above image, some of you may ask “Soheil, are you using an older version of Power BI Desktop?” and I am glad you asked. The answer as always is “It depends”. And, this time it depends on the timing of writing this blog which is early December 2023, and the fact that Power BI Desktop November 2023 was released a couple of weeks ago, therefore, Power BI Desktop October 2023 is kind of OLD! And, YES! I installed Power BI Desktop Nov 2023 for the sake of writing this blogpost.

Continue reading “Quick Tips: Find Power BI Desktop Local Port Number with Model Explorer” →
Azure, Azure Analysis Services, BISM Tabular, Business Intelligence - BI, DAX, Dynamic Management Views (DMV), Power BI, Power BI Desktop, SQL Server, SQL Server 2016, SQL Server Analysis Services - SSAS, SQL Server Management Studio - SSMS, T-SQL

Automate Testing SSAS Tabular Models

Automate Testing SSAS Tabular

In real world SSAS Tabular projects, you need to run many different testing scenarios to prove your customer that the data in Tabular model is correct. If you are running a Tabular Model on top of a proper data warehouse then your life would be a bit easier than when you build your semantic model on top of an operational database. However it would be still a fairly time-consuming process to run many test cases on Tabular Model, then run similar tests on the data warehouse and compare the results. So your test cases always have two sides, one side is your source database that can be a data warehouse and the other side is the Tabular Model. There are many ways to test the system, you can browse your Tabular Model in Excel, connecting to your Data Warehouse in Excel and create pivot tables then compare the data coming from Tabular Model and the data coming from the Data Warehouse. But, for how many measures and dimensions you can do the above test in Excel?

The other way is to run DAX queries on Tabular Model side. If your source database is a SQL Server database, then you need to run T-SQL queries on the database side then match the results of both sides to prove the data in Tabular Model is correct.

In this post I’d like to share with you a way to automate the DAX queries to be run on a Tabular model.

Straight away, this is going to be a long post, so you can make or take a cup of coffee while enjoying your reading.

While I will not cover the other side, the source or the data warehouse side, it is worth to automate that part too as you can save heaps of times. I’m sure a similar process can be developed in SQL Server side, but, I leave that part for now. What I’m going to explain in this post is just one of many possible ways to generate and run DAX queries and store the results in SQL Server. Perhaps it is not perfect, but, it is a good starting point. If you have a better idea it would be great to share it with us in the comments section below this post.

Requirements

  • SQL Server Analysis Services Tabular 2016 and later (Compatibility Level 1200 and higher)
  • An instance of SQL Server
  • SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)

How does it work

What I’m going to explain is very simple. I want to generate and run DAX queries and capture the results. The first step is to get all measures and their relevant dimensions, then I slice all the measures by all relevant dimensions and get the results. At the end I capture and store the results in a SQL Server temp table. Let’s think about a simple scenario:

  • you have just one measure, [Internet Sales], from ‘Internet Sales’ table
  • The measure is related to just one dimension, “Date” dimension
  • The “Date” dimension has only four columns, Year, Month, Year-Month and Date
  • you want to slice [Internet Sales] by Year, Month, Year-Month and Date

So you need to write four DAX queries as below:

EVALUATE
SUMMARIZE(
    'Internet Sales'
    , Date'[Calendar Year]
    , "Internet Sales", [Internet Total Sales]
)
EVALUATE
SUMMARIZE(
   'Internet Sales'
   , 'Date'[Month Name]
   , "Internet Sales", [Internet Total Sales]
)
EVALUATE
SUMMARIZE(
    'Internet Sales'
   , 'Date'[Year-Month]
   , "Internet Sales", [Internet Total Sales]
)
EVALUATE
SUMMARIZE(
     'Internet Sales'
    , 'Date'[Date]
    , "Internet Sales", [Internet Total Sales]
)

It is easy isn’t it? But, wait. What if you have 10 measures related to 4 dimension and each dimension has 10 columns? That sounds laborious doesn’t it? Well, in real world scenarios you won’t slice all measures by all relevant dimensions, but, you still need to do a lot. What we are going to do is to generate and run the DAX queries and store the results in a table in SQL Server. How cool is that?

OK, this is how it works…

  • Creating a Linked Server for SSAS Tabular instance from SQL Server
  • Generating DAX queries using Tabular DMVs
  • Running the queries through Tabular model and getting/storing the results in a SQL Server temp table

Continue reading “Automate Testing SSAS Tabular Models” →

BISM Tabular, Business Intelligence - BI, Dynamic Management Views (DMV), Power BI, Quick Tips, SQL Server

Quick Tips: Boolean Conditions when Querying SSAS DMVs

Boolean Comparison in SSAS DMVs, Error: A Boolean expression is not allowed in the context

If you are querying SSAS DMVs you may want to add some conditions in the query.

Something like getting all active relationships, perhaps like below:

select * from $SYSTEM.TMSCHEMA_RELATIONSHIPS where IsActive = 'true'

Running the above query on an instance of SSAS Tabular gives you the following error message:

Error: A Boolean expression is not allowed in the context …

Fixing this is quite easy, run the below query to get active relationships:

select * from $SYSTEM.TMSCHEMA_RELATIONSHIPS where IsActive

Boolean Comparison in SSAS DMVs

And to get inactive relationships run this one:

select * from $SYSTEM.TMSCHEMA_RELATIONSHIPS where not IsActive

Boolean Comparison in SSAS DMVs

Business Intelligence - BI, SQL Server Analysis Services - SSAS

Three different approaches for creating a BISM in SSAS 2012, Tabular vs. Multidimensional vs. PowerPivot

SSAS 2012 supports three different approaches for creating a BISM (Business Intelligence Semantic Model):

1. Tabular

a. Uses relational modelling constructs like such as tables and relationships

b. Uses xVelocity in-memory analytics engine for sorting and data calculations

c. Needs to use SSDT (SQL Server Data Tools) to implement

d. Can import data from relational data sources using OLE DB native and managed providers

e. Tabular solutions only support one model.bim file per solution, which means that all work must be done in a single file. Development teams that are accustomed to working with multiple projects in a single solution might need to revise how they work when building a shared tabular solution.

f. support DAX calculations, DAX queries, and MDX queries

g. Tabular model databases can use row-level security, using role-based permissions in Analysis Services (DAX implementation required)

h. It might be not a good choice for the systems that are going to load terabytes of data

Continue reading “Three different approaches for creating a BISM in SSAS 2012, Tabular vs. Multidimensional vs. PowerPivot” →