Category: Business Intelligence – BI

BISM Tabular, Power BI, Power BI Desktop, SQL Server Analysis Services - SSAS

Import Power BI Desktop Model to SSAS Tabular 2016

Import Power BI Model to SSAS Tabular

Note: This article has been updated on June 2017 to support latest versions of Power BI Desktop and SSAS Tabular 2017.

Update July 2020: While this method still works with Power BI Desktop June 2017 release and SSAS 2017, it potentially doesn’t work with the later versions of Power BI Desktop (Jul 2020) and SSAS 2019 as there are new DAX functions that are available in the Power BI Desktop but not in SSAS 2019. So use this method as an experimental method AT YOUR OWN RISK!

Have you created a robust model in Power BI Desktop and you are looking for a way to import it to an instance of SQL Server Analysis Services Tabular? Hmm, it would be highly beneficial if you could import Power BI model to SSAS Tabular and it potentially saves lots of development time and costs. The good news is that with SQL Server 2016 and SQL Server Data Tools for Visual Studio 2015 it is possible. In this post I show you how to import Power BI Desktop model to SSAS Tabular 2016. Unfortunately, you cannot do the job in any prior versions of SQL Server, SQL Server Management Studio or SSDT.

Requirements

  • SQL Server 2016 Tabular: You can download SQL Server 2016 Developer Edition for free. Check this out for more information
  • SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) 2016: Down SSMS 2016 from here
  • SQL Server Data Tools for Visual Studio 2015 (SSDT 2015): You can download it here
  • Power BI Desktop: Download Power BI Desktop from here

How it works?

The idea is to

  1. Connect to Power BI Desktop model from SSMS 2016
  2. Script the model
  3. Modify the script
  4. Execute the scripts on your on-premises instance of SSAS Tabular 2016
  5. Open the new SSAS Tabular database in SSDT 2016
  6. Modify the model
  7. Redeploy and process the model

Note: Do not close Power BI Desktop until we completely import the model to SSAS Tabular.

Assumptions

I assume

  • You’re familiar with all required tools listed above
  • You’re familiar with SQL Server Analysis Services Tabular models and any corresponding concepts, security settings and so forth
  • You’re familiar with DAX and Power Query

Continue reading “Import Power BI Desktop Model to SSAS Tabular 2016” →

BISM Tabular, Business Intelligence - BI, DAX, Power BI, Power BI Desktop

Connect to Power BI Desktop Model via its Local Port from Excel and SSMS

Power BI Desktop Excel SSMSPower BI Desktop is a fantastic report authoring tool. I have lots of experience working with Tableau as well and I can say, man, Power BI is growing very quickly. Lots of awesome ideas have been added to Power BI and a lot more is coming. But, It might be a question for some of you that is that possible to connect to a Power BI Desktop model from Excel, SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) or SQL Server Profiler? The answer is yes, you can. But, how on earth someone should connect to a Power BI Desktop model from Excel, SSMS or SQL Server Profiler? Well, it could be useful for the following scenarios:

  • Connecting to the model using SQL Server Profiler for performance tuning, monitoring and so forth
  • Again, if you have some performance issues you might need to connect to the model from SSMS
  • You have a complex model and it’s hard for you understand it, but, you are a great Excel developer, so you can connect to Power BI Desktop model from Excel so you can use reach features available in Excel like named sets
  • Just for curiosity! You are curious about writing MDX codes over an existing model, you want to see how your model look like in Excel and so forth

In this article I show you how to connect to Power BI Desktop model regardless of any use case scenarios. So for whatever reason you’d like to connect to a Power BI Desktop model this post will help you achieve your goal.

How it works

Power BI Desktop uses xVelocity technology and loads data into memory. It uses a local instance of SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS). It does the job by running msmdsrv.exe file which can be found in “bin” folder under your Power BI Desktop installation folder which is normally under you Program Files. The msmdsrv.exe is indeed the SSAS service file. So even if you haven’t installed SSAS on your machine Power BI Desktop runs msmdsrv.exe. When Power BI Desktop runs msmdsrv.exe it creates a local instance of SSAS. This local SSAS instance uses a random port number so it would be valid until Power BI Desktop is not closed or the msmdsrv.exe is not killed from Task Manager.

Find msmdsrv.exe in Power BI Desktop Folder

So, we have a local instance of SSAS using a random port number. Therefore, we should be able to connect to the instance from Excel, SSMS or SQL Server Profiler only if we know the port number.

Note: If you have installed an instance of SSAS on your machine you can find msmdsrv.exe under “\OLAP\bin” folder from SQL Server installation path:

%ProgramFiles%\Microsoft SQL Server\msasXX.INSTANCE_NAME\OLAP\bin

which XX is your version of SQL Server. So XX would be 10, for SQL Server 2008R2, could be 11 for SQL Server 2012 and so on. The difference between the local msmdsrv.exe file located in your Power BI Desktop\bin folder with the other one you can find under your SQL Server installation folder is that the one which Power BI Desktop runs is a console programme while the other one is a Windows service programme.

How to find Power BI Desktop local port?

There are various methods you can obtain the port number. In this post I explain three of them.

  • Finding Power BI Desktop local port using Windows Command Prompt (CMD)
  • Using DAX Studio
  • Finding local port number from Power BI Desktop temp directory

Continue reading “Connect to Power BI Desktop Model via its Local Port from Excel and SSMS” →

Business Intelligence - BI, DAX, Power BI, Power BI Desktop, Power BI Desktop RS, Self-Service BI

How to Define A Measure Table in Power BI Desktop

In this post I show you a simple trick to make your Power BI model more organised and more readable. I call it creating a “Measure Table”. Let me explain. The story is that I was working on a model with lots of tables. The database schema was NOT a proper star schema so there were a bunch of measures spread into lots of different tables. On top of that we’ve created lots of calculated measures with different home tables which made it really hard to find a particular measure or calculated measure. I thought, well, when it is that hard to find the calculated measures at development time how hard it could be for a customer to find, understand and use the measures we created. The visibility of the calculated measures could be an issue when we have lots of measures in lots of different tables. You will soon feel the issue in customer training sessions when you need to navigate between lots of different tables to find a calculated measure.

Consider you create a Power BI model with direct connect to a SSAS Multidimensional instance. You will immediately notice that all measure groups have a special calculation icon (Measure Group Icon in Power BI) rather than a normal table icon (Table icon in Power BI) which makes the measure groups more recognisable for the end users. For instance, you can easily find any calculated measure related to “Internet Sales” under the “Internet Sales” measure group.

Measure Groups in SSAS Multidimensional Dirct Connect

I know, we can search and find the measures very easily, but, our model would be more organised and more user friendly if we can put all measures in one or more tables which contain just related calculated measures and nothing else. For instance, we can create a measure table for time intelligence calculations and name it “Sales Time Intelligence Measures” and put all  calculated measures like “Sales YTD”, “Sales LYTD”, “Sales Period Over Period” on it. It will make your model nice and clean, easy to use and easy to learn for your customers. It will also help you to train your customers more easily.

In this article I’ll connect to a SQL Server instance and will use the famous Adventure Works database. I also show you how to get the job done in both “Import” and “DirectQuery” modes as there are some limitations applied to the DirectQuery mode which makes it harder to do what we want.

Lets start.

Continue reading “How to Define A Measure Table in Power BI Desktop” →

Power BI, Power BI Service, SQL Server Reporting Services - SSRS

SSRS 2016 and Power BI

SSRS 2016 and Power BI

Without a doubt SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) is one of the most powerful reporting tools for several years. There are tons of features that you can use to make a report that suits your customers’ needs. Despite programmability and extensibility are key strengths of Reporting Services platform when it comes to creating dashboards, SSRS has absolutely nothing to offer as SSRS is a report authoring tool. So it never supposed to offer dashboards. In old days we could create web parts in SharePoint or we could install Performance Point and include SSRS reports in Performance Point dashboards. But, setting up and implementing dashboards in SharePoint/Performance Point was always a painful job. Happily with the new version of SQL Server 2016 we are able to pin visuals from existing on-prem SSRS reports to a Power BI dashboard. In this article I explain how SSRS 2016 and Power BI integration works.

Requirements

When you meet the above requirements you can pin visuals from existing SSRS reports to Power BI or you can create brand new reports and pin the visuals to Power BI.

Note: You can only pin report visuals to Power BI that means you won’t be able to pin tables and matrix to Power BI.

Note: If you don’t want to install the developer edition of SQL Server 2016 OR for any reason you cannot use the developer edition, don’t worry, the functionality I’m going to explain is available in other editions of SQL Server 2016. Indeed, the only editions that doesn’t support SSRS integration with Power BI are “Express Edition” and ” Express with Tools” editions. Check this out for more information.

Register SSRS with Power BI

After installing SQL Server you need to configure Reporting Services. As configuring Reporting Services is out of scope I leave it to you.

Note: At the time of writing this article I was using SQL Server 2016 CTP3. The same principles apply to SQL Server 2016.

  • Open “Reporting Services Configuration Manager”
  • Enter the “Server Name” and “Reporting Services Instance” then click “Connect”

SSRS 2016 Continue reading “SSRS 2016 and Power BI” →