What is Power BI + Business Calculations in MDX

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• What is Power BI? (article, all visitors)
• MDX: Previous Period Growths, Shares & Moving Averages (40-min, Full Access Members)
• More MDX Member & Set Functions (1-hour 40-min, Full Access Members)
• New PPTs: Data Science with SQL Server & R, Microsoft Business Analytics 2014 Roadshow (5 PPTs, registered members)
• Dates & Agenda For 2014 Microsoft Business Analytics Roadshow (all visitors)

MDX: Previous Period Growths, Shares & Moving Averages

Our online MDX training has been growing every month! In his newest, 40-minute video, MDX: Previous Period Growths, Shares & Moving Averages, Chris Webb introduces common business calculations implemented in MDX and their underlying patterns: the relative tuple pattern, used for previous period growth calculations, percentage share calculations, and the relative set pattern, used for obtaining three-period moving averages, amongst others. These are some of the most fundamental patterns you should learn if you plan on using MDX for real-world business applications. You will also find out how to deal with formatting of the results and handling division-by-zero and division-by-null errors.

More MDX Member & Set Functions

Chris, our resident, and world-leading authority on Multidimensional Expressions from Technitrain, shows you even more important MDX functions in his tour-de-force, 1-hour 40-minute, demo-rich video More MDX Member & Set Functions. You will learn how to compute important business reporting metrics, such as to-date calculations, same-period-previous-year ones, top-n, including shares, even customer churn, using advanced set logic functions. Chris introduces: ParallelPeriod(), PeriodsToDate(), YTD(), QTD(), MTD(), Filter(), NonEmpty(), TopCount(), BottomCount(), TopPercent(), BottomPercent(), Head(), Tail(), Generate(), and the StrToX/XToStr function family. You will also see how to ensure that your Date dimension has the correct Type properties to become directly usable for some of these functions. And if you are patient and so inclined, you might even hear Chris's offer of his own employ to a somewhat unique organisation, somewhere in the world! It did make me laugh and he caught me a bit off-guard when I was reviewing his newest video...

What is Power BI?

To celebrate the launch of Microsoft Power BI, I have written a well-received (even by the Microsoft Power BI product team!) essay introducing this subject, and explaining some of the misconceptions. For example, did you know that, formally, Power Query, Power Map, Power Pivot, and Power View are not Power BI, even though they are essential to Power BI? If you are confused, and would like to get some clarity as to what is what and where it is all going, read my What is Power BI today. I am impressed by this launch—it has the potential to bring modern analytics to a billion people, worldwide.

Microsoft Business Analytics Roadshow 2014

For the 7th year running, Microsoft have sponsored our annual Business Analytics roadshow. This year, I will be bringing it to: Austria, Denmark, Finland (just done), Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and United States. One or two additional countries may be added to the list in due course. The full agenda with session abstracts, and the dates, are available here online, and we cover not only Power BI, but also all that is new and current in the world of Big Data and HDInsight, Parallel Data Warehouse, and my personal favourite, Advanced Analytics. I cannot tell you too much, but expect plenty of news in that last area over the course of this year and beyond—which makes me quite happy, as, at last, advanced analytics, or if you prefer the new-fangled term, data science, is taking a foothold amongst more traditional customers. You can download my slide decks from this newest roadshow, and also a couple of decks on Data Science with SQL Server and R, from the usual place.

Promotion: 10% Off

For our newsletter readers we offer a 10% discount, good for all memberships, until the end of March. If you are not a Full Access Member, or if you would like to extend your existing membership, simply use the code:

NEWSLETTER2014FEB

It is even valid for Group Memberships, great for a team of users who want to learn Microsoft BI from the best place on the web. 

Although I am hitting the road with my travels, we have 2 more MDX videos in post-production, Power BI content being prepared, and more on data mining. See you next time!