Hekaton, PolyBase, SP1, CALCULATE & SharePoint 2013 

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Summary of New Content:

• SQL Server 2012 SP1, Hekaton, xVelocity, PolyBase, Data Mining, Mobility, Office & SharePoint 2013 (1900 word article, free to all)
• SharePoint Conference 2012 slides (5 PPT decks, registered members)
• DAX: The CALCULATE Function (47 min video, Full Access Members)

DAX: The CALCULATE Function 

CALCULATE is the most important function in Data Analysis Expression (DAX) because it allows you to manipulate filter context, which is necessary for building real-world calculations. Let world-expert Marco Russo, from sqlbi.com, explain it in our newest, 47-minute video tutorial that contains 5 detailed, high-definition demos. You will learn: when to use CALCULATE, its syntax, how to manipulate filters at column granularity level, and how to transform a row context into a filter context. Learning these concepts will enable you to write advanced, real-world calculations in DAX, such as percentage of a total, and it will make following the remaining modules of our DAX video series easier.

News

What a busy two months! Microsoft have released SQL Server 2012 SP1, notably to support all the new, cool, and attractive BI in SharePoint 2013 and Excel 2013, while also annoucing such major steps towards making powerful BI more accesible, like PolyBase, which will unify the way to query traditional data warehouses with big data-style Hive/HDFS stores. We also heard about the long-awaited support for mobile devices. You can read all about that, and about in-memory transaction processing (Project Hekaton) in my in-depth summary of these important announcements.

I had a tremendous response to both the one day BI seminar, and the breakout session, which I delivered to over 1500 attendees in Las Vegas, at the SharePoint Conference 2012. You can download all of my new PPT decks—they also cover SharePoint 2013, and some new technologies, such as the Office Audit Services, useful for managing the risk of spreadmarts, which we now call End-User Computing, or EUC. If you are planning on installing the new SharePoint technologies, to try them out, make sure to check the excellent post by Simon Lidberg, who has gone through the pain of putting a working demo environment, more than once. My 2p: make sure to use the released versions of the software, not the previews, and clean your machine of previous installations of SharePoint quite thoroughly, including the IIS directories, if possible.

The schedule of the upcoming Microsoft Business Analytics roadshow will be published in a few days, I will tweet it, and it will be in the next newsletter.

Above all, I am glad that Microsoft are innovating in the BI space, not only on the back-end, but very much on the user side, and in the cloud. Expect a lot of news coming from Office 365 and SharePoint Online, but if you are thinking about upgrading your SharePoint farms, consider making the jump to the cloud, at least the private one, to ease the pains of ongoing upgrades, as the Microsoft product release cycles will only get shorter and faster. I will talk about that, as part of the hybrid IT story, during my next roadshow.

Holiday Promotion—$10 Off!

'Tis the season for a promo. Unlike others', our promos are for everyone, not just for new members—use them to join or to extend your existing membership. We do things differently, that is why none of our memberships force you into a recurring payment, so you can be lazy about trying things out: get 1 month, discount it, and enjoy watching quality programming after that large festive meal—trust me, learning BI helps digest:

• Take $10 off every membership with code DEC12TENUSD
• Take 20% off individual 1 year membership, with code DEC12TWENTYPCT worth $58!
• Take 10% off 1 year group memberships with code DEC12TENPCT

If you purchase a membership while yours is still current, you are just extending it by the purchased period. Great way to take advantage of that discount while it is valid, but hurry, it will expire on 31 December 2012. Don't forget to click "Apply to order" when using the codes.

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Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoy your membership,