DAX in Action! on Our 1st Birthday

When you registered on ProjectBotticelli.com, you asked to be notified about new content. This is our seventh newsletter since we have launched our site exactly one year ago, in July 2011. It is a brief one, since the previous one went out only two weeks ago, and I try to keep them infrequent, so I promise to keep clear of your inbox until the end of August.

Summary of New Content:

• DAX in Action! by Alberto Ferrari (18 min)
• 1-month and 3-month Group Memberships

News

I am very pleased to welcome Alberto Ferrari and Marco Russo, authors of popular, selling-out books about PowerPivot, DAX, and, just-published this month, Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Analysis Services: The BISM Tabular Mode, which was co-authored with Chris Webb. When not writing a book, or recording a video, they offer BI consulting services at sqlbi.com, have a look at their publicised pricing for standard BI solutions, a rare thing to offer so openly, and a sign of their experience in BI project risk management.

Alberto and Marco are world-renowned for their in-depth knowledge of SSAS, and they would like to share their skills with you, no matter how advanced you are, through our brand-new, online video learning series focused on Data Analysis Expressions. To help you get started, Alberto has recorded a free, 18-minute video, DAX in Action, in which he shows how to build a formula for a DAX calculated measure that lets you count the number of repeat, active customers who have made a purchase—watch it here.

Doing the same thing in the traditional world of OLAP, using MDX, was far more complex, in addition to requiring multidimensional modelling. The beauty of DAX, as Alberto explains in this video, is that you can combine the refreshing simplicity of a tabular model with an arguably slightly more complex formula in DAX, but still keeping the overall solution quite simple, and elegant. DAX is a functional language, and in Alberto's own words, it takes a new attitude to learn it, but it is well worth investing your time. Personally, I have always been a fan of functional, and non-imperative logic programming, Miranda being one of the first langauges I have picked up two decades ago. DAX is much easier, with none of the bracket frenzy of LISP, but if we ever published the outtakes from our recordings, you would probably find it funny looking at the experts trying to troubleshoot a missing closing bracket... In any case, it is clear to me that Microsoft has banked its BI future on DAX. 

We are already in post-production for two more videos, one by Marco Russo, and another one by both new authors, with Marco doing the explaining, and Alberto on demos. Expect those later in August, and more are planned to appear over the course of the year.

Our Birthday Special Offer—10% Discount

As projectbotticelli.com has just turned 1 year old, I am happy to offer a birthday celebration promotion to welcome Alberto and Marco online. I would like to offer a 10% discount on individual 1-month, 3-month, and annual memberships, and also on annual group memberships. Please use code 1stBIRTHDAY at checkout, but hurry, this code will only work until the end of August 2012.

New Group Memberships

We have just introduced two new group membership plans: a 1-month and a 3-month 10, 20, 50, and 100 membership pack. You select the number of users and you decide between getting a pack of single-use codes, or a single multi-use shared code, whichever is more convenient for you. These memberships would be useful in a company where users only want to view content to learn a specific task, and they do not have to start their memberships on the same day. However, our standard, existing annual group membership still offers the best overall value and the lowest per-month price.

Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoy being a member,