excel 2013 powerpivot in action - torino technologies group
TRANSCRIPT
SQLBI• Book Writer
• With the Microsoft BI stack?
• Work with Analysis Services 2008 R2?
• Know what Self-Service BI is?
• Have already seen DAX in Action?
• Already tried Excel 2013?
2009: PowerPivot was announced
• Alberto and Marco answer;
o Looks cool, but not a game changer
o You are pushing Excel Hell again!
o They need BI Professionals!
o What about the one version of the truth?
o That’s another useless tool in the BI arena
DAX: Data Analysis eXpressions
• Brand new
o Language
o Technology
Agenda
o Really, believe me!
• Instead, we’ll see what benefits DAX brings to
the BI world
The Scenario
o Already have a data warehouse
o Need to perform analysis on data
o Build a lot of reports
o Share them with the colleagues
o Using Excel 2013
Dim Date
Dim Customers
Dim Products
Dim Categories
Dim Geography
The data warehouse is a pretty simple and standard one, after all we will build everything in an hour…
The project in good’ol style
• Find a good BI professional
• Start Visual Studio
• Create the solution
• Deploy on the server
o You already know UDM, don’t you?
o Even if now it is called Multidimensional
Let’s Prototype in Excel
I Need to Count the Customers…
• You want to count the customers?
• DimCustomer is a dimension!!!
o Well, don’t worry, it can be done
o I will create a new measure group
o And setup a fact-relationship
with customers
hours
I Need Just Another Count…
• You want to count the buying customers?
• That’s a DISTINCT COUNT over the fact table!
o Well, yes, it can be done
o It’s not easy, although…
• I will create a new DISTINCT measure group
• Then I will partition the fact table
• Maybe review the clustered
Let’s do it with Excel
Hey, the numbers are wrong…
• Ops… I counted CustomerKey
o That’s not fair to say at this point…
• All I need to do is
o Bring CustomerCode in the fact table
o Create a new measure group
o Pay an ORDER BY during
processing
other DISTINCT COUNT!
• Now you want to count the NEW customers???
• What do you mean by that?
o Customers who never bought anything
o And are buying something now
o It would be interesting…
• Oh… well… let me search if
there’s a blog post somewhere,
somebody might have done it
• Let’s talk later about that
Let’s discover the power of DAX
I Need Some Banding Now
• Analysis by Price Range?
• I need to compute the range during ETL
o That means updating the DWH structure
Ops… it’s the fact table!
• Then add a new dimension,
that’s easy
• Searching for insights in data
• Is there a correlation between
o Product Cost
o Sales Amount
o Gross Margin
data in a graphical way
• At the end, I will produce
the report
I want a map chart!!!
• I’d like to
o Pinpoint all the sales as coloured circles
o Not very useful, but looks damn good!
o I have seen this on a friend’s reporting system!
Wow… that map looks cool!
• I need latitude and longitude
o Maybe a geography column in the DWH?
o Where do I start learning about it?
o And how do I find latitude of Rome?
o Not speaking about longitude…
• Time to google for a solution
o You will need a charting component
o Write some code to find coordinates
o And finally mix everything together
Let’s do it with PowerPivot
And my colleagues in Timbuktu?
• My company has lots of subsidiaries
• They all want to look at my Excel report
• And maybe modify and improve it
• Is there a way to publish all this?
• Ehm… no, they still use an
older version of Office
deploy Office 2007…
Tabular and DAX Concepts
o Tables
o Relationships
• Calculated Columns
• Incredible Speed
The story so far…
VISICALC, it was 1978
The future is Self-Service BI
• Users learned how to use spreadsheet
• They will learn how to use DAX
• DAX
• Believe it or not, BI will become self-service
o DAX is an important skill to learn
Corporate BI vs. Self Service BI
• Analysis Services 2012 Tabular
o Same data model
o A solution to all the problems
o The way to the future
o The only available solution
• But the modeling is
o Easier, Simpler, Cheaper
Thank you! Check daily our new articles on
www.sqlbi.com
your analytical environment?
Ask to SQLBI, we offer many services to help you:
Find out more on
• With the Microsoft BI stack?
• Work with Analysis Services 2008 R2?
• Know what Self-Service BI is?
• Have already seen DAX in Action?
• Already tried Excel 2013?
2009: PowerPivot was announced
• Alberto and Marco answer;
o Looks cool, but not a game changer
o You are pushing Excel Hell again!
o They need BI Professionals!
o What about the one version of the truth?
o That’s another useless tool in the BI arena
DAX: Data Analysis eXpressions
• Brand new
o Language
o Technology
Agenda
o Really, believe me!
• Instead, we’ll see what benefits DAX brings to
the BI world
The Scenario
o Already have a data warehouse
o Need to perform analysis on data
o Build a lot of reports
o Share them with the colleagues
o Using Excel 2013
Dim Date
Dim Customers
Dim Products
Dim Categories
Dim Geography
The data warehouse is a pretty simple and standard one, after all we will build everything in an hour…
The project in good’ol style
• Find a good BI professional
• Start Visual Studio
• Create the solution
• Deploy on the server
o You already know UDM, don’t you?
o Even if now it is called Multidimensional
Let’s Prototype in Excel
I Need to Count the Customers…
• You want to count the customers?
• DimCustomer is a dimension!!!
o Well, don’t worry, it can be done
o I will create a new measure group
o And setup a fact-relationship
with customers
hours
I Need Just Another Count…
• You want to count the buying customers?
• That’s a DISTINCT COUNT over the fact table!
o Well, yes, it can be done
o It’s not easy, although…
• I will create a new DISTINCT measure group
• Then I will partition the fact table
• Maybe review the clustered
Let’s do it with Excel
Hey, the numbers are wrong…
• Ops… I counted CustomerKey
o That’s not fair to say at this point…
• All I need to do is
o Bring CustomerCode in the fact table
o Create a new measure group
o Pay an ORDER BY during
processing
other DISTINCT COUNT!
• Now you want to count the NEW customers???
• What do you mean by that?
o Customers who never bought anything
o And are buying something now
o It would be interesting…
• Oh… well… let me search if
there’s a blog post somewhere,
somebody might have done it
• Let’s talk later about that
Let’s discover the power of DAX
I Need Some Banding Now
• Analysis by Price Range?
• I need to compute the range during ETL
o That means updating the DWH structure
Ops… it’s the fact table!
• Then add a new dimension,
that’s easy
• Searching for insights in data
• Is there a correlation between
o Product Cost
o Sales Amount
o Gross Margin
data in a graphical way
• At the end, I will produce
the report
I want a map chart!!!
• I’d like to
o Pinpoint all the sales as coloured circles
o Not very useful, but looks damn good!
o I have seen this on a friend’s reporting system!
Wow… that map looks cool!
• I need latitude and longitude
o Maybe a geography column in the DWH?
o Where do I start learning about it?
o And how do I find latitude of Rome?
o Not speaking about longitude…
• Time to google for a solution
o You will need a charting component
o Write some code to find coordinates
o And finally mix everything together
Let’s do it with PowerPivot
And my colleagues in Timbuktu?
• My company has lots of subsidiaries
• They all want to look at my Excel report
• And maybe modify and improve it
• Is there a way to publish all this?
• Ehm… no, they still use an
older version of Office
deploy Office 2007…
Tabular and DAX Concepts
o Tables
o Relationships
• Calculated Columns
• Incredible Speed
The story so far…
VISICALC, it was 1978
The future is Self-Service BI
• Users learned how to use spreadsheet
• They will learn how to use DAX
• DAX
• Believe it or not, BI will become self-service
o DAX is an important skill to learn
Corporate BI vs. Self Service BI
• Analysis Services 2012 Tabular
o Same data model
o A solution to all the problems
o The way to the future
o The only available solution
• But the modeling is
o Easier, Simpler, Cheaper
Thank you! Check daily our new articles on
www.sqlbi.com
your analytical environment?
Ask to SQLBI, we offer many services to help you:
Find out more on