James Fancke

The increasing security requirements of a growing data model

In my previous post about why I think AAS is a great value proposition, I mentioned that AAS currently has Object Level Security, whereas Power BI Premium does not.

I’d like to now expand on this point by explaining why security is an essential part of a growing data model, and why Object Level Security is an important requirement of “larger” data models. (Note: large as in many dimensions and fact tables regardless of the row count)

Continue reading “The increasing security requirements of a growing data model”

Why Azure Analysis Services is a great value proposition

Update: after waking up this morning I realized there was just one more item I wanted to add, the suitability of AAS for multi-geo environments, which for many can be a deal breaker.

Update 2 (18/12/2018): Daniel Otykier has reminded me of a further important distinction between Power BI Premium and Analysis Services, and that is the ability to use third party tools such as Tabular Editor.

After reading Matthew Roche’s blog post on Choosing Between Power BI Premium and Azure Analysis Services I couldn’t help but feel that Azure Analysis Services (AAS) was coming off second best in a two-person race.

Continue reading “Why Azure Analysis Services is a great value proposition”

BI Theory #7: Multidimensional vs Tabular

In this post, I’m going to do a quick comparison between multidimensional and tabular data models, and hopefully give you some intuition about why they have the features that they do. Asset 1 Continue reading “BI Theory #7: Multidimensional vs Tabular”

BI Theory #6: Analytical Databases

Previously I wrote about the basics of transactional databases. In this post, I’ll outline why you don’t necessarily want to build your analysis on top of a transactional database, and instead why you’d be better off using (or building!) an analytical database.

1 - Different Worlds

Continue reading “BI Theory #6: Analytical Databases”

BI Theory #5: What are databases?

Just a quick disclaimer – I don’t intend on getting too technical with databases. The target audience for this article is still your everyday office worker rather than a database administrator or IT professional.

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What is a database?

A database stores and organizes digital information. The way data is organized within the database allows it to be specialized for different scenarios. This results in different types of databases. Continue reading “BI Theory #5: What are databases?”

BI Theory #4: Where to get Power Query and Power Pivot

Now that you know the basic idea behind Power Query and Power Pivot it’s time to start downloading them! (if you have no idea what I’m talking about you may want to read my earlier posts here [1], [2], [3])

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The thing to remember is that Power Query and Power Pivot aren’t just Excel features – they pop up in a few places and if you know how to use them in one application you can easily use them in another.

See below for some housekeeping on where to get access to Power Query and Power Pivot. Continue reading “BI Theory #4: Where to get Power Query and Power Pivot”

BI Theory #3: PQFL (“M”) vs DAX

See here on why you might want to learn these languages for Power Query and Power Pivot, and see here for where they fit within creating a data model that you can analyse to get quick insights.

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In this post I hope to give a brief comparison of M (formerly “PQFL”) and DAX. Continue reading “BI Theory #3: PQFL (“M”) vs DAX”