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In my previous post about impersonation , I mentioned that DirectQuery impersonation was a bit tricky. That is because there is a special project property called Impersonation Settings that determines the credentials to use when connecting to the data source. The MSDN documentation of this property is...

If you look at my previous post on the tabular project structure , you’ll see this teaser: “There are a couple of other files in the project folder, an optional ABF file and a hidden user settings file, but I’ll talk about those another day.” The ABF file description I just put off because it was complicated...

If you look in the metadata of a BIM file, or if you look at the .dax file generated by the DAX Editor , you will see the following perplexing comment: -------------------------------------------------------- -- -- PowerPivot measures command (do not modify manually) -- -----------------------------...

You’ve run the import wizard, and imported a bunch of tables into your tabular model. Now you want to import one more from that same connection. How do you do this? What you need is the Existing Connections dialog. To start the Existing Connections dialog, go to Model->Existing Connections or click...

Now that RC0 has arrived I can finally post about security for tabular models. I have put off writing about security because I think the RC0 documentation on this subject is really quite good so I don’t have too much to add. Also, we had a minor feature add for RC0 that is very exciting. You can now...

If you look carefully, you can see my roots showing. No, not my hair – you can see my old job showing. When I came to work on the Analysis Services team, we had to design an “environmentally friendly” Visual Studio package in a hurry using the Visual Studio extensibility framework , same as everybody...

In PowerPivot, the Edit Table Properties dialog box is used for a few things. It is used to add columns to a table, remove columns from a table, and adjust the set of rows included in the table. This works great for PowerPivot. All the data in the PowerPivot model is stored in a single partition, so...

Here is a pop quiz on impersonation when connecting to a data source for tabular models. Question 1: How many impersonation options are supported for tabular models? 2, as shown in the tabular designer 3 4, as shown in SSMS Question 2: My impersonation credentials are validated in the Import Wizard....

Sometimes people ask me for the slide deck to my PASS presentation . I send out the deck, but there is only one slide in there that is worth anything. This post summarizes the only useful slide in the entire deck. Let’s think about this question – why are tabular models necessary when we already have...

Case sensitive, that is. Last year, Denny Lee posted about PowerPivot’s case insensitivity problem . Tabular models have the same insensitivity problem by default. As I mentioned in my previous post on language and collation settings , when creating a new tabular project, the collation used by default...

Collation and language settings are tricky; so tricky that my two planned blog posts on this topic can only scratch the surface of what goes on under the covers here. This post is a simplified overview of collation and language settings for Denali. In a future post I will show you an example of how to...

When I was at PASS I fielded a bunch of questions about the BI semantic model, multidimensional (OLAP), and tabular (VertiPaq) models. I think there is some confusion about what the BI semantic model, multidimensional, and tabular models actually are, and when precisely you can use MDX and DAX with multidimensional...

It is possible for the tabular designer to get into an error state. If you try to save the model, you can get this error message: “Unable to save the file Model.bim. Reason: The file cannot be saved because it is marked as readonly.” Most of the time, you see this error if the tabular designer has lost...

Marco Russo has a nice post about the basics of configuring the workspace database server . You can use his post to learn how to set the tabular instance to use for the workspace database server for new and existing projects. However, there’s more to picking a workspace database server than just picking...

The Office ACE provider is used to import from text files, Excel files, and Access files. Just like for any data provider, you need to install the provider on both the client side (machine with BIDS) and on the server side (both the machine running the workspace DB instance and the machine running the...

With a new storage engine comes new processing options. Here are some fast facts about processing tabular models, in Q&A format. What are my processing options? The following table shows the available processing options for each object. Object Available Processing Options Database Process Clear,...

By default, when you open the .bim file after closing it, the data comes back. Did you ever wonder where this data comes from? It depends on a number of factors. Let’s explore. Before we begin, I want you to keep a very important point in mind. The metadata in the BIM file is always more important than...

We have this Data Backup property on the .bim file that by default is turned off. You may wonder why this property exists. Let us explore what it is this property does, and why it (and backups in general) are useful in the tabular designer. The Data Backup property specifies whether or not an ABF file...

In my DirectQuery 101 post, I promised an example of configuring a model with DirectQuery only partitions. Here it is. Imagine for a moment that AdventureWorks has turned into a fast moving mega-conglomerate, with transactions written to FactInternetSales all day long for years and years. Your job is...

The astute user may notice that the Analysis Services tasks included with Integration Services in BIDS are unchanged for Denali. That is true. The good news is that you can use Integration Services with tabular models. Because the underlying structure of a tabular model is the same as the underlying...

DirectQuery is to tabular modeling what ROLAP is to multidimensional modeling. It’s a way to get query results from your model in real time without processing data into the model first. You can get started with DirectQuery by perusing some of our MSDN documentation on DirectQuery . Also, Edward...

This is a follow up to part 1 – dealing with large row sets in the tabular designer . In this post I will show how to import just a subset of your table data to get started, add partitions while you go, and then process the whole model at deployment time. I will demonstrate the technique importing via...

Amir Netz’s two billion and seven rows demo at last year’s BI conference was not just demoware. Unlike PowerPivot, where the amount of data you can load is bound by the workbook size , the amount of data you can load into tabular models is limited only by server capacity. This is true at both design...

After you import or restore from PowerPivot , you are left with a workbook with pivot tables and slicers to point to the PowerPivot model. The next logical step in the import/restore process is to re-point these objects to your new tabular model. How do you do that? Attempt 1: Change the PowerPivot data...

We have two pieces of functionality in Denali that allow you to promote a self-service model in PowerPivot (v1 or v2) to a tabular model. One is i mport from PowerPivot , where you create a new tabular modeling project from a pre-existing PowerPivot workbook. Another is restore from PowerPivot (pretend...