Book Review: SQL Server 2012 Analysis Services The BISM Tabular Model

By Jennifer Salvo, 2012/11/12

I will start off by saying, whenever I see the names Marco Russo, Alberto Ferrari and Chris Webb on a SQL Server Analysis Services book….I know it will good. This book is no exception! I can say with 100% honesty that this is one of the best technical books I’ve read.

I work with SQL Server 2012 and am eager to learn more about the tabular model. When I saw this book on Amazon, I bought it immediately and am so grateful that I did. I have many technical books that sit on shelves collecting dust; this book is definitely not one of them. After only a few weeks the book is already showing wear from use and I haven’t put it on the shelf yet. I have read it cover-to-cover and plan to do so again – it is truly that good.

There are so many great aspects to this book I don’t know where to begin. I can say that it does an excellent job not only covering the basics but also many advanced topics as well.

A few of my favorite topics/chapters are listed below:

The chapters on DAX are especially helpful, they provide an excellent overview of the language including advanced topics that I haven’t found in other sources. The book also contains a chapter on DAX time intelligence functions which I found quite useful.
The ‘Building Hierarchies’ chapter is excellent as well. It goes beyond the basics, covering more complex scenarios such as parent/child hierarchies and unary operators.
The chapter ‘Data Modeling in Tabular’ provides a very thorough overview of common dimensional modeling topics (Type 1 and Type 2 SCDs, degenerate dimensions, junk dimensions and snapshot fact tables) and implementation best practices in the tabular model.
‘Using Advanced Tabular Relationships’ is my favorite chapter. This chapter provides examples using the DAX language to implement more complex scenarios/relationships. A few topics covered are Multicolumn Relationships (in a tabular cube a relationship can be set with one column only, but the authors provide examples that work around this limitation), Banding (grouping attribute values), Many-to-Many relationships, Basket Analysis and Currency Conversion.
The chapters on Security and Deployment/Processing are also well-written and very thorough. They cover many scenarios in detail.

The authors do a great job comparing the Multidimensional and Tabular technologies; They discuss the pros and cons of both models as well as reasons you may choose one over the other. In addition, the authors often demonstrate multiple ways to solve a given problem and discuss the advantages/disadvantages of each implementation. They provide excellent overviews of performance analysis and troubleshooting and warn the readers of things to avoid.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to expand their knowledge of the SQL Server Analysis Services 2012 tabular model. This book will not disappoint. It is a worthwhile addition to any Business Intelligence practitioners library.

Some additional resources by the authors:

‘Expert Cube Development with Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Analysis Services’ is an excellent book covering the multidimensional model.
‘The Many-to-Many Revolution 2.0’ is a free whitepaper that covers many-to-many relationships in both the multidimensional and tabular BISM.
More content can be found at: www.sqlbi.com and Chris Webb’s BI Blog