Super Charge Power BI with Azure Analysis Services
In April we announced the general availability of Azure Analysis Services, which evolved from the proven analytics engine in Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Services. The success of any modern data-driven organization requires that information is available at the fingertips of every business user, not just IT professionals and data scientists, to guide their day-to-day decisions. Self-service BI tools have made huge strides in making data accessible to business users. However, most business users don’t have the expertise or desire to do the heavy lifting that is typically required, including finding the right sources of data, importing the raw data, transforming it into the right shape, and adding business logic and metrics, before they can explore the data to derive insights. With Azure Analysis Services, a BI professional can create a semantic model over the raw data and share it with business users so that all they need to do is connect to the model from any BI tool and immediately explore the data and gain insights. Azure Analysis Services uses a highly optimized in-memory engine to provide responses to user queries at the speed of thought. Read about it on the Azure blog.Azure Analysis Services web designer adds new DAX query viewer
In July, we released the Azure Analysis Services web designer. This new browser-based experience allows developers to start creating and managing Azure Analysis Services (AAS) semantic models quickly and easily. While SQL Server Data Tools (SSDT) and SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) are still the primary tools for development, this new experience is intended to make modeling fast and easy. It is great for getting started on a new model or to do things such as adding a new measure to an existing model. Today we are announcing new functionality that will allow you to generate, view and edit your DAX queries. This provides a great way to learn DAX while testing the data in your models. DAX or Data Analysis Expressions is a formula language used to create custom calculations in Analysis Services. DAX formulas include functions, operators, and values to perform advanced calculations on data in tables and columns. Read about it in the Azure blog.
Azure Analysis Services - Windows Authentication
How does Azure Analysis Services support Windows Authentication? Does it translate the account to the matching account in Azure Active Directory? I am trying to use the Windows Authentication option but I keep getting an error: password_required_for_managed_user: Password is required for managed user (Microsoft.IdentityModel.Clients.ActiveDirectory).Explore SaaS analytics with Azure SQL Database, SQL Data Warehouse, Data Factory, and Power BI
Continuing our series of tutorials on SaaS application patterns with SQL Database, we are delighted to announce an additional cross tenant analytics tutorial. This new tutorial shows how to extract and load tenant data into Azure SQL Data Warehouse (SQL DW) using Azure Data Factory (ADF) and then analyze it in Power BI. Read more about it in the Azure blog.Import Power BI Desktop files into Azure Analysis Services
Last week we released a preview of the Azure Analysis Services web designer. This new browser-based experience will allow developers to start creating and managing Azure Analysis Services (AAS) semantic models quickly and easily. While SQL Server Data Tools (SSDT) and SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) are still the primary tools for development, this new experience is intended to make simple changes fast and easy. It is great for getting started on a new model or to do things such as adding a new measure to a development or production AAS model. The Azure Analysis Services web designer now allows you to import data models from a Power BI Desktop file (PBIX) into Azure Analysis Services. Once imported to AAS, you will be able to use those models with all of the AAS features including table partitioning. Read about it on the Azure blog.Accelerate data warehouse modernization with Informatica Intelligent Cloud Services for Azure
Today at the Informatica World, Scott Guthrie, EVP, Cloud + AI, along with Anil Chakravarthy, CEO of Informatica, announced the availability of Informatica Intelligent Cloud Services (IICS) for Azure. Microsoft has partnered with Informatica, a leader in Enterprise Data Management, to help our customers accelerate data warehouse modernization. This service is available as a free preview on Azure today. Informatica provides a discovery-driven approach to data warehouse migration. This approach simplifies the process of identifying and moving data into Azure SQL Data Warehouse (SQL DW), Microsoft’s petabyte scale, fully managed, globally available analytics platform. With the recently released SQL DW Compute Optimized Gen2 tier, you can enjoy 5x performance, 4x concurrency and 5x scale from previous generation. Read about it in the Azure blog.Replicated Tables now generally available in Azure SQL Data Warehouse
We are excited to announce that Replicated Tables, a new type of table distribution, are now generally available in Azure SQL Data Warehouse (SQL DW). SQL DW is a fully managed, flexible, and secure cloud data warehouse tuned for running complex queries fast and across petabytes of data. The key to performance for large-scale data warehouses is how data is distributed across the system. When queries join across tables and data is distributed differently, data movement is required to complete the query. The same can be said when transforming data to load, enrich, and apply business rules. With Replicated Tables, the data is available on all compute nodes, hence data movement is eliminated, and queries run faster. In some cases, such as small dimension tables, choosing a Replicated Table versus a Round Robin table, can increase performance because data movement is reduced. As with all optimization techniques, performance gains may vary and should be tested. Read about it in the Azure blog.Accelerate Data Warehouse Modernization to Azure with Informatica’s AI-Driven Platform
Data is central to digital transformation. We have seen many customers moving their data workloads to Azure which benefits from the inherent performance and agility of cloud. Enterprises are moving on-premises workloads to public cloud at an increasing rate. Results from the 2016 Harvey Nash/KPMG CIO Survey indicate that cloud adoption is now mainstream and accelerating as enterprises shift data-intensive operations to the cloud. Specifically, Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) adoption is predicted to be the fastest-growing sector of cloud platforms according to KPMG, growing from 32 percent in 2017 to 56 percent adoption in 2020. Cloud data warehouse is one of the fastest growing segments. Azure SQL Data Warehouse (SQL DW) allows customers to unleash the elasticity and economics of cloud while maintain a fast, flexible and secure warehouse for all their data. Microsoft has partnered with Informatica, the leader in Enterprise Cloud Data Management, to help you modernize your data architecture with intelligent data management. So that you can build a cloud data warehouse solution that easily adapts and scales as your data types, volume, applications and architecture changes. Read about it in the Azure blog.Azure Databricks, industry-leading analytics platform powered by Apache Spark™
The confluence of cloud, data, and AI is driving unprecedented change. The ability to utilize data and turn it into breakthrough insights is foundational to innovation today. Our goal is to empower organizations to unleash the power of data and reimagine possibilities that will improve our world. To enable this journey, we are excited to announce the general availability of Azure Databricks, a fast, easy, and collaborative Apache® Spark™-based analytics platform optimized for Azure. Read about it in the Azure blog.Blazing fast data warehousing with Azure SQL Data Warehouse
Today, we announced general availability of Azure SQL Data Warehouse (SQL DW) Compute Optimized Gen2 tier, the new generation of Azure SQL DW. Azure SQL DW is a fast, flexible, and secure cloud data warehouse tuned for running complex queries fast and across petabytes of data. We see two key trends that drive data warehousing decisions, the amount of data continues to grow exponentially and the need to deliver insights from all this data is even more urgent. Azure SQL DW Compute Optimized Gen2 tier is designed to help customer accomplish just this by delivering dramatic query performance improvement. In addition, SQL DW now supports up to 128 concurrent queries while being able to provision five times more computing power compared to the previous product generation. Read more about it in the Azure blog.
