Category: SQL Server

DAX Duration Measure in Days, Hours, Minutes, Seconds

Credit where credit is due. This is an enhancement of the technique originally posted here by @konstantinos and @smoupre. A client needed a duration expressed in this format: 2 days, 05:03:52 In other words, Whenever the duration exceeds 86,400 seconds, express that portion in days, then build the remainder in hh:mm:ss format. This is the… Continue reading DAX Duration Measure in Days, Hours, Minutes, Seconds

I am positive that measure is not negative – Weird Analysis Services Cube Behavior

I ran into a situation recently that had me stumped for a bit, and there didn’t seem to be any other posts about this when I searched. I was working with a cube containing a very straightforward measure. This was an integer column and used an AggregationType of SUM. No other calculations were involved. When… Continue reading I am positive that measure is not negative – Weird Analysis Services Cube Behavior

Simple way to test connectivity or compose OLEDB connection strings

This tip has been around a while, but I still run into developers who don’t know it, so it’s worth a post. If you ever need to test connectivity or compose a valid OLEDB connection string, try this: Create an empty text file. Rename the extension from TXT to UDL Double click this file. The Data… Continue reading Simple way to test connectivity or compose OLEDB connection strings

Creating Dashboards WITHOUT SharePoint

As a business intelligence consultant, a frequent request I receive is to “create a dashboard”. One of the first things I do is verify that I understand what the client is actually asking for. Many times by “dashboard”, what they mean is “lots of stuff all at once”. That’s when I pull out the tried… Continue reading Creating Dashboards WITHOUT SharePoint

MDX Query to show number of child members in a Dimension

I was validating some assumptions about my dimensions’ data distribution and hierarchies and wrote some MDX to confirm the number of members. You could also do this by writing a SQL query against the relational table, but in this case I definitely wanted to see exactly what was coming from the OLAP dimensions. Here’s the… Continue reading MDX Query to show number of child members in a Dimension

Solution to “Very strange results from MDX Query”

The solution to “Very strange results from MDX Query” It turns out that there was both a psychological component and a technical one. The sleuth who help me discover these issues was none other than my friend, former and occasionally current colleague, Scot Reagin. The technical issue: I was using FORMAT_STRING to format the numbers… Continue reading Solution to “Very strange results from MDX Query”

Strange results from MDX Query

I am currently working on adding forecasting capabilities to an existing customer cube. The MDX to do this is based on calculations in an existing spreadsheet model. The spreadsheet works very well in terms of modeling the business accurately, but it’s a manually intensive process and does not recalculate automatically as needed. Perfect candidate for… Continue reading Strange results from MDX Query