The nice people at PASS have made a video of my session on “Using SSAS MD as a data source for Power BI” available to view for free on YouTube:
I’m honoured that it’s listed one of their “Best of PASS Summit 2017” sessions, and there are lots of other great videos on the same page including Alberto Ferrari’s session on DAX optimisation.
Some of the tips in this video include a few things I’ve been meaning to blog about for a while, including how important it is to set the ValueColumn property on your dimension attributes in SSAS MD – it lets you use lots of functionality in Power BI that isn’t otherwise available, including date slicers.
Chris,
Wow! The release of the video from PASS. That’s Awesome!!
Thanks,
Greg Coopman
Great Video! I’ve found more often than not advanced users are importing from SSAS MD. This is occurring mostly due to adding new calcs or the needed to display charts from more than one cube. IT can add more calcs and build bigger cubes, but this in direct conflict with self-service. Your advice to use the Database and query directly isn’t a great option for users that may be more advance with analytics and building report, but not with relational databases. I hope MS continues to develop solutions to allow Power BI and SSAS MD to work together.
We recently worked with MS to resolve performance issues with importing. There is a second MDX engine which works well with importing large amount of data. The following MCode changes will provide access to the 2.0 engine.
Source = AnalysisServices.Databases(“cube”, [TypedMeasureColumns=true, Implementation = “2.0”])
Interesting – I hadn’t heard about the Implementation = “2.0” option, I’ll have to check it out.
The Live Connection/Import decision will depend a lot on how well your cubes are designed in the first place. If your users need to build charts from more than one cube it sounds like someone has made a bad design decision somewhere along the line, and probably should have built one cube rather than several. I understand the point you’re making though.
@Rayishome,
I came across with the Implementation property when developing Tabular model in 1400 compatibility mode – and the property added for SSAS Tabular data source. However, I am not able to find more about the property in MSDN site too.
For SSAS model and DW setup and intergration with source and destination system we can help you. Let us know. We have integrated tool for the same.
Very useful and helpful video..
Great job Chris and thanks!
Hi, Above contents and videos is really helpful for data analysis platform setup. I am making a integrated framework for UI in excel, UI in Power BI based on DW and BI data model setup for business rules. As you mentioned Existing business process stay same no matter which power Bi or excel or any front-end tool.
We have implemented DW, BI, and UI in excel pivot and power BI in fully integrated mode without using Visual studio. Kindly, suggest how i can make some better for world.
Hi,
Concerning the “.Value” column you get in Power BI whenever you set a ValueColumn in SSAS. Would there be a way to rename this column? The current name is confusion for end users.
The valueColumn works well in LiveConnection, but doesn’t work at all in import mode. Any hints?
Has anyone (using SSAS MD live connect) been able to set the Title of a Chart to be based on a field within model. Everything is greyed out.
When connecting to SSAS from Power BI, I select Import, in the MDX or Dax query window I want to specify the Company and Date to filter records imported using Dax. How to do this ?