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Calculating Pearson Correlation Coefficient using DAX

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The original request for this calculation came from one of my blog readers who dropped me a mail asking if it possible to calculated the Pearson Correlation Coefficient (PCC or PPMCC) in his PowerPivot model. In case you wonder what the Pearson Correlation Coefficient is and how it can be calculated – as I did in the beginning –  these links What is PCC, How to calculate PCC are very helpful and also offer some examples and videos explaining everything you need to know about it. I highly recommend to read the articles before you proceed here as I will not go into the mathematical details of the calculation again in this blog which is dedicated to the DAX implementation of the PCC.

UPDATE 2017-06-04:
Daniil Maslyuk posted an updated version of the final calculation using DAX 2.0 which is much more readable as it is using variables instead of separate measures for every intermediate step. His blog post can be found at https://xxlbi.com/blog/pearson-correlation-coefficient-in-dax/

Anyway, as I know your time is precious, I will try to sum up its purpose for you: “The Pearson Correlation Coefficient calculates the correlation between two variables over a given set of items. The result is a number between -1 and 1. A value higher than 0.5 (or lower than –0.5) indicate a strong relationship whereas numbers towards 0 imply weak to no relationship.”

The two values we want to correlate are our axes, whereas the single dots represent our set of items. The PCC calculates the trend within this chart represented as an arrow above.

The mathematical formula that defines the Pearson Correlation Coefficient is the following:

The PCC can be used to calculate the correlation between two measures which can be associated with the same customer. A measure can be anything here, the age of a customer, it’s sales, the number of visits, etc. but also things like sales with red products vs. sales with blue products. As you can imagine, this can be a very powerful statistical KPI for any analytical data model. To demonstrate the calculation we will try to correlate the order quantity of a customer with it’s sales amount. The order quantity will be our [MeasureX] and the sales will be our [MeasureY], and the set that we will calculate the PCC over are our customers. To make the whole calculation more I split it up into separate measures:

  1. MeasureX := SUM(‘Internet Sales’[Order Quantity])
  2. MeasureY := SUM(‘Internet Sales’[Sales Amount])

Based on these measures we can define further measures which are necessary for the calculation of our PCC. The calculations are tied to a set if items, in our case the single customers:

  1. Sum_XY := SUMX(VALUES(Customer[Customer Id]), [MeasureX] * [MeasureY])
  2. Sum_X2 := SUMX(VALUES(Customer[Customer Id]), [MeasureX] * [MeasureX])
  3. Sum_Y2 := SUMX(VALUES(Customer[Customer Id]), [MeasureY] * [MeasureY])
  4. Count_Items := DISTINCTCOUNT(Customer[Customer Id])

Now that we have calculated the various summations over our base measures, it is time to create the numerator and denominator for our final calculation:

  1. Pearson_Numerator :=
  2.     ([Count_Items] * [Sum_XY]) – ([MeasureX] * [MeasureY])
  3. Pearson_Denominator_X :=
  4.     ([Count_Items] * [Sum_X2]) – ([MeasureX] * [MeasureX])
  5. Pearson_Denominator_Y :=
  6.     ([Count_Items] * [Sum_Y2]) – ([MeasureY] * [MeasureY])
  7. Pearson_Denominator :=
  8.     SQRT([Pearson_Denominator_X] * [Pearson_Denominator_Y])

Having these helper-measures in place the final calculation for our PCC is straight forward:

  1. Pearson := DIVIDE([Pearson_Numerator], [Pearson_Denominator])

This [Pearson]-measure can then be used together with any attribute in our model – e.g. the Calendar Year in order to track the changes of the Pearson Correlation Coefficient over years:

Pearson by Year

For those of you who are familiar with the Adventure Works sample DB, this numbers should not be surprising. In 2005 and 2006 the Adventure Works company only sold bikes and usually a customer only buys one bike – so we have a pretty strong correlation here. However, in 2007 they also started selling Clothing and Accessories which are in general cheaper than Bikes but are sold more often.

Pearson by Year and Category

This has impact on our Pearson-value which is very obvious in the screenshots above.

As you probably also realized, the Grand Total of our Pearson calculation cannot be directly related to the single years and may also be the complete opposite of the single values. This effect is called Simpson’s Paradox and is the expected behavior here.

[MeasuresX] and [MeasureY] can be exchanged by any other DAX measures which makes this calculation really powerful. Also, the set of items over which we want to calculated the correlation can be exchanged quite easily. Below you can download the sample Excel workbook but also a DAX query which could be used in Reporting Services or any other tool that allows execution of DAX queries.

Sample Workbook (Excel 2013): Pearson.xlsx
DAX Query: Pearson_SSRS.dax

Recursive Calculations in PowerPivot using DAX

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If you have ever tried to implement a recursive calculations in DAX similar to how you would have done it back in the good old days of MDX (see here) you would probably have come up with a DAX formula similar to the one below:

  1. Sales ForeCast :=
  2. IF (
  3.     NOT ( ISBLANK ( [Sales] ) ),
  4.     [Sales],
  5.     CALCULATE (
  6.         [Sales ForeCast],
  7.         DATEADD ( 'Date'[Calendar], –1, MONTH )
  8.     ) * 1.05
  9. )

However, in DAX you would end up with the following error:

A circular dependency was detected: ‘Sales'[Sales ForeCast],’Sales'[Sales ForeCast].

This makes sense as you cannot reference a variable within its own definition – e.g. X = X + 1 cannot be defined from a mathematical point of view (at least according to my limited math skills). MDX is somehow special here where the SSAS engine takes care of this recursion by taking the IF() into account.

So where could you possible need a recursive calculation like this? In my example I will do some very basic forecasting based on monthly growth rates. I have a table with my actual sales and another table for my expected monthly growth as percentages. If I do not have any actual sales I want to use my expected monthly growth to calculate my forecast starting with my last actual sales:

GeneralLogic

This is a very common requirement for finance applications, its is very easy to achieve in pure Excel but very though to do in DAX as you probably realized on your own what finally led you here Smile

In Excel we would simply add a calculation like this and propagate it down to all rows:
ExcelFormula
(assuming column C contains your Sales, D your Planned Growth Rate and M is the column where the formula itself resides)

In order to solve this in DAX we have to completely rewrite our calculation! The general approach that we are going to use was already explained by Mosha Pasumansky some years back, but for MDX. So I adopted the logic and changed it accordingly to also work with DAX. I split down the solution into several steps:
1) find the last actual sales – April 2015 with a value of 35
2) find out with which value we have to multiply our previous months value to get the current month’s Forecast
3) calculate the natural logarithm (DAX LN()-function) of the value in step 2)
4) Sum all values from the beginning of time until the current month
5) Raise our sum-value from step 4) to the power of [e] using DAX EXP()-function
6) do some cosmetic and display our new value if no actual sales exist and take care of aggregation into higher levels

Note: The new Office 2016 Preview introduces a couple of new DAX functions, including PRODUCTX() which can be used to combine the Steps 3) to 5) into one simple formula without using any complex LN() and EXP() combinations.

Step 1:
We can use this formula to get our last sales:

  1. Last Sales :=
  2. IF (
  3.     ISBLANK (
  4.         CALCULATE (
  5.             [Sales],
  6.             DATEADD ( 'Date'[DateValue], 1, MONTH )
  7.         )
  8.     ),
  9.     [Sales],
  10.     1
  11. )

It basically checks if there are no [Sales] next month. If yes, we use the current [Sales]-value as our [Last Sales], otherwise we use a fixed value of 1 as a multiplication with 1 has no impact on the final result.

Step 2:
Get our multiplier for each month:

  1. MultiplyBy :=
  2. IF (
  3.     ISBLANK ( [Last Sales] ),
  4.     1 + [Planned GrowthRate],
  5.     [Last Sales]
  6. )

If we do not have any [Last Sales], we use our [Planned GrowthRate] to for our later multiplication/summation, otherwise take our [Last Sales]-value.

Step 3 and 4:
As we cannot use “Multiply” as our aggregation we first need to calculate the LN and sum it up from the first month to the current month:

  1. Cumulated LN :=
  2. CALCULATE (
  3.     SUMX ( VALUES ( 'Date'[Month] ), LN ( [MultiplyBy] ) ),
  4.     DATESBETWEEN (
  5.         'Date'[DateValue],
  6.         BLANK (),
  7.         MAX ( 'Date'[DateValue] )
  8.     )
  9. )

 

Step 5 and 6:
If there are no actual sales, we display our calculated Forecast:

  1. Sales ForeCast :=
  2. SUMX (
  3.     VALUES ( 'Date'[Month] ),
  4.     IF ( ISBLANK ( [Sales] ), EXP ( [Cumulated LN] ), [Sales] )
  5. )

Note that we need to use SUMX over our Months here in order to also get correct subtotals on higher levels, e.g. Years. That’s all the SUMX is necessary for, the IF itself should be self-explaining here.

 

So here is the final result – check out the last column:
FinalPivot

The calculation is flexible enough to handle missing sales. So if for example we would only have sales for January, our recursion would start there and use the [Planned GrowthRate] already to calculate the February Forecast-value:
FinalPivot2

Quite handy, isn’t it?

The sample-workbook (Excel 365) can be downloaded here: RecursiveCalculations.xlsx

Excel CUBE-Functions and MDX UniqueNames

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Two weeks ago at the German SQL Server Conference 2015 I was at Peter Myer’s session about Mastering the CUBE Functions in Excel. (PS: Peter is also speaking on our upcoming SQLSaturday #374 in Vienna next week and at PASS SQLRally in Copenhagen the week after). After his session we had a further discussion about this topic and our experiences on how to use Excels CUBE-functions in order to build nice Dashboards with native Excel functionalities that also work with e.g. Excel Services. Its always great to exchange with people that share the same passion on he same topic! One thing we both agreed on that is missing currently is a way to get the MDX UniqueName of something that is selected in a slicer, filter or simply in a cell using CUBEMEMBER-function. I once used a special Cube Measure which was created in MDX Script which returned the UniqueName of a given member that was selected together with this special measure. For this to work with Excel you need to know how Excel builds the MDX when querying cube values using CUBEVALUE-function. Here is a little example:
Excel_CubeValue_Formula
This produces the following MDX query:

  1. SELECT
  2. {
  3.     (
  4.         [Measures].[Internet Sales Amount],
  5.         [Product].[Category].&[1]
  6.     )
  7. } ON 0
  8. FROM [Adventure Works]
  9. CELL PROPERTIES VALUE, FORMAT_STRING, LANGUAGE, BACK_COLOR, FORE_COLOR, FONT_FLAGS

So it basically creates a tuple that contains everything you pass into the CUBEVALUE-Function as a parameter. Knowing this we can create a calculated measure to get the MDX UniqueName of this tuple using MDX StrToTuple()- and MDX AXIS()-function:

  1. MEMBER [Measures].[Excel TupleToStr] AS (
  2. TupleToStr(axis(0).item(0))
  3. )

Replacing the [Measures].[Internet Sales Amount] of our initial CUBEVALUE-function with this new measure would return this to Excel:

  1. ([Measures].[Internet Sales Amount],[Product].[Category].&[1])

 

Ok, so far so good but nothing really useful as you need to hardcode the member’s UniqueName into the CUBEVALUE-function anyway so you already know the UniqueName.
However, this is not the case if you are dealing with Pivot Table Page Filters and/or Slicers! You can simply refer to them within the CUBEVALUE-function but you never get the UniqueName of the selected item(s). Well, at least not directly! But you can use the approach described above, using an special MDX calculated measure, to achieve this as I will demonstrate on the next pages.

Calculated measures can only be created using the Pivot Table interface but can also be used in CUBE-functions. So first thing you need to do is to create a Pivot Table and add a new MDX Calculated Measure:
Excel_Create_MDX_calculated_measure

!Caution! some weird MDX coming !Caution!


Excel_Create_MDX_calculated_measure2

You may wonder, why such a complex MDX is necessary and what it actually does. What it does is the following: Based on the example MDX query that Excel generates (as shown above) this is a universal MDX that returns the MDX UniqueName of any other member that is selected together with our measure using the CUBEVALUE-function. It also removes the UniqueName of the measure itself so the result can be used again with any other measure, e.g. [Internet Sales Amount]
The reason why it is rather complex is that Excel may group similar queries and execute them as a batch/as one query to avoid too many executions which would slow down the overall performance. So we cannot just reference the first element of our query as it may belong to any other CUBEVALUE-function. This MDX deals with all this kinds of issues.

The MDX above allows you to specify only two additional filters but it may be extended to any number of filters that you pass in to the CUBEMEMBER-function. This would be the general pattern:

  1. MID(
  2.   IIf(axis(0).item(0).count > 0 AND
  3.         NOT(axis(0).item(0).item(0).hierarchy IS [Measures]),
  4.     "," + axis(0).item(0).item(0).hierarchy.currentmember.uniquename,
  5.     "")
  6. + IIf(axis(0).item(0).count > 1 AND
  7.         NOT(axis(0).item(0).item(1).hierarchy IS [Measures]),
  8.     "," + axis(0).item(0).item(1).hierarchy.currentmember.uniquename,
  9.     "")
  10. + IIf(axis(0).item(0).count > n AND
  11.         NOT(axis(0).item(0).item(n).hierarchy IS [Measures]),
  12.     "," + axis(0).item(0).item(n).hierarchy.currentmember.uniquename,
  13.     "")
  14. , 2)

After creating this measure we can now use it in our CUBE-functions in combination with our filters and slicers:
Excel_MDX_CUBEVALUE_UniqueNames_Filter
Excel_MDX_CUBEVALUE_UniqueNames_Slicer

You may noted that I had to use CUBERANKEDMEMBER here. This is because filters and slicers always return a set and if we would pass in a set to our CUBEVALUE function a different MDX query would be generated which would not allow us to extract the single UniqueNames of the selected items using the approach above (or any other MDX I could think of). So, this approach currently only works with single selections! I hope that the Excel team will implement a native function to extract the UniqueName(s) of the selected items in the future to make this workaround obsolete!

Once we have our UniqeName(s) we can now use them in e.g. a CUBESET-function to return the Top 10 days for a given group of product (filter) and the selected year (slicer):
Excel_MDX_CUBESET_TopCount

And that’s it!

So why is this so cool?

  • It works with SSAS (multidimensional and tabular) and Power Pivot as Excel still uses MDX to query all those sources. It may also work with SAP HANA’s ODBO connector but I have not tested this yet!
  • It does not require any VBA which would not work in Excel Services – this solution does!
  • The calculation is stored within the Excel Workbook so it can be easily shared with other users!
  • There is no native Excel functionality which would allow you to create a simple Top 10 report which works with filters and slicers as shown above or any more complex dynamic report/dashboard with any dynamic filtering.

So no more to say here – Have fun creating your interactive Excel web dashboards!

Download sample Workbook: Samples.xlsx

Note: You may also rewrite any TOPCOUNT expression and use the 4th and 5h parameter of the CUBESET-function instead. This is more native and does not require as much MDX knowledge:Excel_MDX_CUBESET_TopCount_Native
However, if you are not familiar with MDX, I highly recommend to learn it before you write any advanced calculations as show above as otherwise the results might be a bit confusing in the beginning! Especially if you filter and use TOPCOUNT on the same dimension!

Dynamic ABC Analysis in Power Pivot using DAX – Part 2

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Almost two years ago I published the first version of an Dynamic ABC Analysis in Power Pivot and by now it is the post with the most comments among all my blog posts. This has two reason:
1) the formula was quite complex and not easy to understand or implement
2) the performance was not really great with bigger datasets

When the first of those comments flew in, I started investigating into a new, advanced formula. At about the same time Marco Russo and Alberto Ferrari published their ABC Classification pattern – a static version using calculated columns – at www.daxpatterns.com. When I had my first dynamic version ready I sent it to Marco and Alberto and asked if they are interested in the pattern and if I can publish it on their website. Long story short – this week the new pattern was released and can now be found here:

ABC Classification – Dynamic

It got some major performance improvements and was also designed towards reusability with other models. The article also contains some detailed explanations how the formula actually works but its still very hard DAX which will take some time to be fully understood. The pattern also features some extended versions to address more specific requirements but I think its best to just read the article on your own.

Hope you enjoy it!

Events-In-Progress for Time Periods in DAX

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Calculating the Events-In-Progress is a very common requirement and many of my fellow bloggers like Chris Webb, Alberto Ferrari and Jason Thomas already blogged about it and came up with some really nice solutions. Alberto also wrote a white-paper summing up all their findings which is a must-read for every DAX and Tabular/PowerPivot developer.
However, I recently had a slightly different requirement where I needed to calculate the Events-In-Progress for Time Periods – e.g. the Open Orders in a given month – and not only for a single day. The calculations shown in the white-paper only work for a single day so I had to come up with my own calculation to deal with this particular problem.

Before we can start we need to identify which orders we actually want to count if a Time Period is selected. Basically we have to differentiate between 6 types of Orders for our calculation and which of them we want to filter or not:
Overview_EventsInProgress_TimeFrame

Order Definition
Order1 (O1) Starts before the Time Period and ends after it
Order2 (O2) Starts before the Time Period and ends in it
Order3 (O3) Starts in the Time Period and ends after it
Order4 (O4) Starts and ends in the Time Period
Order5 (O5) Starts and ends after the Time Period
Order6 (O6) Starts and ends before the Time Period

For my customer an order was considered as “open” if it was open within the selected Time Period, so in our case we need to count only Orders O1, O2, O3 and O4. The first calculation you would usually come up with may look like this:

  1. [MyOpenOrders_FILTER] :=
  2. CALCULATE (
  3.     DISTINCTCOUNT ( ‘Internet Sales’[Sales Order Number] ),
  4.     FILTER (
  5.         ‘Internet Sales’,
  6.         ‘Internet Sales’[Order Date]
  7.             <= CALCULATE ( MAX ( ‘Date’[Date] ) )
  8.     ),
  9.     FILTER (
  10.         ‘Internet Sales’,
  11.         ‘Internet Sales’[Ship Date]
  12.             >= CALCULATE ( MIN ( ‘Date’[Date] ) )
  13.     )
  14. )
[MyOpenOrders_FILTER] :=
CALCULATE (
    DISTINCTCOUNT ( 'Internet Sales'[Sales Order Number] ), -- our calculation, could also be a reference to measure
    FILTER (
        ‘Internet Sales’,
        ‘Internet Sales’[Order Date]
            <= CALCULATE ( MAX ( 'Date'[Date] ) )
    ),
    FILTER (
        ‘Internet Sales’,
        ‘Internet Sales’[Ship Date]
            >= CALCULATE ( MIN ( 'Date'[Date] ) )
    )
)

We apply custom filters here to get all orders that were ordered on or before the last day and were also shipped on or after the first day of the selected Time Period. This is pretty straight forward and works just fine from a business point of view. However, performance could be much better as you probably already guessed if you read Alberto’s white-paper.

So I integrate his logic into my calculation and came up with this formula (Note that I could not use the final Yoda-Solution as I am using a DISTINCTCOUNT here):

  1. [MyOpenOrders_TimePeriod] :=
  2. CALCULATE (
  3.     DISTINCTCOUNT ( ‘Internet Sales’[Sales Order Number] ),
  4.     GENERATE (
  5.         VALUES ( ‘Date’[Date] ),
  6.         FILTER (
  7.             ‘Internet Sales’,
  8.             CONTAINS (
  9.                 DATESBETWEEN (
  10.                     ‘Date’[Date],
  11.                     ‘Internet Sales’[Order Date],
  12.                     ‘Internet Sales’[Ship Date]
  13.                 ),
  14.                 [Date], ‘Date’[Date]
  15.             )
  16.         )
  17.     )
  18. )

To better understand the calculation you may want to rephrase the original requirement to this: “An open order is an order that was open on at least one day in the selected Time Period”.

I am not going to explain the calculations in detail again as the approach was already very well explained by Alberto and the concepts are the very same.

An alternative calculation would also be this one which of course produces the same results but performs “different”:

  1. [MyOpenOrders_TimePeriod2] :=
  2. CALCULATE (
  3.     DISTINCTCOUNT ( ‘Internet Sales’[Sales Order Number] ),
  4.     FILTER (
  5.         GENERATE (
  6.             SUMMARIZE (
  7.                 ‘Internet Sales’,
  8.                 ‘Internet Sales’[Order Date],
  9.                 ‘Internet Sales’[Ship Date]
  10.             ),
  11.             DATESBETWEEN (
  12.                 ‘Date’[Date],
  13.                 ‘Internet Sales’[Order Date],
  14.                 ‘Internet Sales’[Ship Date]
  15.             )
  16.         ),
  17.         CONTAINS ( VALUES ( ‘Date’[Date] ), [Date], ‘Date’[Date] )
  18.     )
  19. )

I said it performs “different” as for all DAX calculations, performance also depends on your model, the data and the distribution and granularity of the data. So you should test which calculation performs best in your scenario. I did a simple comparison in terms of query performance for AdventureWorks and also my customer’s model and results are slightly different:

Calculation (Results in ms)   AdventureWorks   Customer’s Model
[MyOpenOrders_FILTER]                   58.0              1,094.0
[MyOpenOrders_TimePeriod]                   40.0                  390.8
[MyOpenOrders_TimePeriod2]                   35.5                  448.3

As you can see, the original FILTER-calculation performs worst on both models. The last calculation performs better on the small AdventureWorks-Model whereas on my customer’s model (16 Mio rows) the calculation in the middle performs best. So it’s up to you (and your model) which calculation you should prefer.

The neat thing is that all three calculations can be used with any existing hierarchy or column in your Date-table and of course also on the Date-Level as the original calculation.

Download: Events-in-Progress.pbix

SSAS Dynamic Named Sets in Calculated Members

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Recently at one of my customers we were doing some performance tuning on a SSAS Multidimensional cube and I came across something I have not seen before yet in my lifetime as a SSAS developer. Even the simplest select queries where running for several seconds, even if executed on warm cache! So first I thought this may be related to some SCOPE assignments overwriting values etc. Using my MdxScriptDebugger I could easily identify that none of the SCOPE assignments had any impact on the actual result of the query. However, what the result of the MdxScriptDebugger trace also revealed was that the query-time increased after a calculated member was created. Important to note here is that this specific member was NOT used in the test-query at all! Investigating into the calculated member turned out that it was using a Dynamic Named Set.

Dynamic Named Sets are usually used if you want a set to be re-evaluated in the current context opposed to Static Named Sets which are only evaluated once during creation. For example you can create a Dynamic Named Set for your Top 10 customers. Changing the Year or Country would cause a re-evaluation of the set and different customers are returned for your filter selections. These type of calculated sets is usually not a problem.

Another reason to used Dynamic Named Sets is to deal with Sub-Selects. Some client tools, foremost Microsoft Excel Pivot Tables, use Sub-Selects to deal with multiple selections on the same attribute. Lets do a little example on how to use Dynamic Named Sets here. Assume you need to calculate the average yearly sales for the selected years. This may sound very trivial at first sight but can be very tricky. In order to calculated the yearly average we first need to calculated how many years are in the currently selected:

  1. CREATE MEMBER CURRENTCUBE.[Measures].[CountYears_EXISTING] AS (
  2. COUNT(EXISTING [Date].[Calendar Year].[Calendar Year].members)
  3. );

However, this does not work if Sub-Selects are used in the query:
PivotTable_SSAS_DynamicNamedSet_Wrong
The calculated member returns “6” (the overall number of years) instead of “2” (the actually selected number of years). The issue here is that the calculation is not aware of any Sub-Select or filters within the Sub-Select as it is executed only outside of the Sub-Select.

To work around this issue you can create a Dynamic Name Set and refer to it in your calculated member:

  1. CREATE DYNAMIC SET [ExistingYears] AS {
  2. EXISTING [Date].[Calendar Year].[Calendar Year].members
  3. };
  4.  
  5. CREATE MEMBER CURRENTCUBE.[Measures].[CountYears_DynamicSet] AS (
  6. COUNT([ExistingYears])
  7. );

PivotTable_SSAS_DynamicNamedSet_Working

Now we get the correct results for our Count of Years calculation and could simply divide our Sales Amount by this value to get average yearly sales. The reason for this is that Dynamic Named Sets are also evaluated within the Sub-Select and therefore a COUNT() on it returns the correct results here.

So this technique is quite powerful and is also the only feasible workaround to deal with this kind of problem. But as I initially said, this can also cause some performance issues!

To illustrate this issue on Adventure Works simply add these two calculations to your MDX Script:

  1. CREATE DYNAMIC SET [ExpensiveSet] AS {
  2. Exists(
  3.     [Product].[Category].[Category].members,
  4.     Filter(
  5.         Generate(
  6.             Head([Date].[Calendar].[Month].MEMBERS, 30),
  7.             CrossJoin(
  8.                 {[Date].[Calendar].CURRENTMEMBER},
  9.                 Head(
  10.                     Order(
  11.                         [Customer].[Customer].[Customer].MEMBERS,
  12.                         [Measures].[Internet Sales Amount],
  13.                         BDESC),
  14.                     10000))),
  15.         [Measures].[Internet Order Quantity] > -1
  16.     ),
  17.     'Internet Sales'
  18. )
  19. };
  20.  
  21. CREATE MEMBER CURRENTCUBE.[Measures].[UnusedCalc] AS (
  22. COUNT([ExpensiveSet])
  23. );

The [ExpensiveSet] is just a Dynamic Named Set which needs some time to be evaluated and the [UnusedCalc] measure does a simple count over the [ExpensiveSet]. Having these calculations in place you can now run any query against your cube and will notice that even the simplest query now takes some seconds to execute even if the new calculated member is not used:

  1. SELECT
  2. [Measures].[Internet Sales Amount] ON 0
  3. FROM [Adventure Works]

I am quite sure that this behavior is related to how Dynamic Named Sets are evaluated and why they also work for Sub-Selects. However, I also think that calculations that are not used in a query should not impact the results and/or performance of other queries!

I just created a bug on Connect in case you want to vote it:
https://connect.microsoft.com/SQLServer/feedback/details/1049569

I know that Dynamic Named Sets in combination with calculated members is a not a widely used technique as I guess most developers are not even aware of its power. For those who are, please keep in mind that these kind of calculations get evaluated for every query which can be crucial if your Dynamic Named Set is expensive to calculate! This has also impact on meta-data queries!

MDX Script Debugger – Beta-Release

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I recently built a tool which should help to debug the MDX scripts of an Analysis Services cube in order to track down formula engine related performance issues of a cube. As you probably know most of the performance issues out there are usually caused by poorly or wrong written MDX scripts. This tool allows you to execute a reference query and highlights the MDX script commands that are effectively used when the query is run. It provides the overall timings and how long each additional MDX script command extended the execution time of the reference query. The results can then either be exported to XML for further analysis in e.g. Power BI or a customized version of the MDX script can be created and used to run another set of tests.

The tool is currently in a beta state and this is the first official release – and also my first written tool that I share publicly so please don’t be too severe with your feedback Open-mouthed smile  – just joking every feedback is good feedback!

Below is a little screenshot which shows the results after  the reference query is executed. The green lines are effectively used by the query whereas the others do not have any impact on the values returned by the query.

ResultsView

A list of all features, further information and also the source code can be found at the project page on codeplex:
https://mdxscriptdebugger.codeplex.com/
Also the download is available from there:
https://mdxscriptdebugger.codeplex.com/releases

Looking forward to your feedback and hope it helps you to track down performance issues of your MDX Scripts!

Configure HTTP access to Analysis Services using PowerShell

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Recently I had to setup an Analysis Services cube and expose it to external users. This is usually done by using Internet Information Server (IIS) and creating a new WebSite which hosts msmdpump.dll. This DLL more or less wraps XMLA commands inside HTTP thus allowing external users to access the cube via HTTP. Besides Windows Authentication this setup also allows Basic Authentication and so external users can simply connect by specifying Username and Password in e.g. Excel when connecting to the cube:
ExcelConnectionDialog

There are already a lot of whitepapers out there which describe how to set things up correctly. Here are just some examples:
– MSDN: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg492140.aspx
– MSBI Academy (great video!): http://msbiacademy.com/?p=5711 by Rob Kerr

They provide very useful information and you should be familiar with the general setup before proceeding here or using the final PowerShell script.

The PowerShell script basically performs the following steps:

  1. Create a local folder as base for your WebSite in IIS
  2. Copy SSAS ISAPI files (incl. msmdpump.dll) to the folder
  3. Create and Configure an IIS AppPool
  4. Create and Configure a IIS WebSite
  5. Add and enable an ISAPI entry for msmdpump.dll
  6. Configure Authentication
  7. Configure Default Document
  8. Update connection information to SSAS server

I tested it successfully with a clean installation of IIS 8.0 (using applicationhost.config.clean.install). In case you already have other WebSites running you may still consider doing the steps manually or adopting the script if necessary. The script is written not to overwrite any existing Folders, WebSites, etc. but you never know.

So here is my final script:

  1. #Import Modules
  2. Import-Module WebAdministration
  3.  
  4. # change these settings
  5. $iisSiteName = "OLAP"
  6. $iisPort = "8000"
  7. $olapServerName = "server\instance"
  8.  
  9. # optionally also change these settings
  10. $isapiFiles = "c:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSAS11.MSSQLSERVER\OLAP\bin\isapi\*"
  11. $iisAbsolutePath = "C:\inetpub\wwwroot\" + $iisSiteName
  12. $iisAppPoolName = $iisSiteName + "_AppPool"
  13. $iisAppPoolUser = "" #default is ApplicationPoolIdentity
  14. $iisAppPoolPassword = ""
  15. $iisAuthAnonymousEnabled = $false
  16. $iisAuthWindowsEnabled = $true
  17. $iisAuthBasicEnabled = $true
  18. $olapSessionTimeout = "3600" #default
  19. $olapConnectionPoolSize = "100" #default
  20.  
  21. if(!(Test-Path $iisAbsolutePath -pathType container))
  22. {
  23.     #Creating Directory
  24.     mkdir $iisAbsolutePath  | Out-Null
  25.  
  26.     #Copying Files
  27.     Write-Host -NoNewline "Copying ISAPI files to IIS Folder … "
  28.     Copy -Path $isapiFiles -Destination $iisAbsolutePath -Recurse
  29.     Write-Host " Done!" -ForegroundColor Green
  30. }
  31. else
  32. {
  33.     Write-Host "Path $iisAbsolutePath already exists! Please delete manually if you want to proceed!" -ForegroundColor Red
  34.     Exit
  35. }
  36.  
  37. #Check if AppPool already exists
  38. if(!(Test-Path $("IIS:\\AppPools\" + $iisAppPoolName) -pathType container))
  39. {
  40.     #Creating AppPool
  41.     Write-Host -NoNewline "Creating ApplicationPool $iisAppPoolName if it does not exist yet … "
  42.     $appPool = New-WebAppPool -Name $iisAppPoolName
  43.     $appPool.managedRuntimeVersion = "v2.0"
  44.     $appPool.managedPipelineMode = "Classic"
  45.  
  46.     $appPool.processModel.identityType = 4 #0=LocalSystem, 1=LocalService, 2=NetworkService, 3=SpecificUser, 4=ApplicationPoolIdentity
  47.     #For details see http://www.iis.net/configreference/system.applicationhost/applicationpools/add/processmodel
  48.  
  49.     if ($iisAppPoolUser -ne "" -AND $iisAppPoolPassword -ne "") {
  50.         Write-Host
  51.         Write-Host "Setting AppPool Identity to $iisAppPoolUser"
  52.         $appPool.processmodel.identityType = 3
  53.         $appPool.processmodel.username = $iisAppPoolUser
  54.         $appPool.processmodel.password = $iisAppPoolPassword
  55.     }
  56.     $appPool | Set-Item
  57.     Write-Host " Done!" -ForegroundColor Green
  58. }
  59. else
  60. {
  61.     Write-Host "AppPool $iisAppPoolName already exists! Please delete manually if you want to proceed!" -ForegroundColor Red
  62.     Exit
  63. }
  64.  
  65. #Check if WebSite already exists
  66. $iisSite = Get-Website $iisSiteName
  67. if ($iisSite -eq $null)
  68. {
  69.     #Creating WebSite
  70.     Write-Host -NoNewline "Creating WebSite $iisSiteName if it does not exist yet … "
  71.     $iisSite = New-WebSite -Name $iisSiteName -PhysicalPath $iisAbsolutePath -ApplicationPool $iisAppPoolName -Port $iisPort
  72.     Write-Host " Done!" -ForegroundColor Green
  73. }
  74. else
  75. {
  76.     Write-Host "WebSite $iisSiteName already exists! Please delete manually if you want to proceed!" -ForegroundColor Red
  77.     Exit
  78. }
  79.  
  80. #Ensuring ISAPI CGI Restriction entry exists for msmdpump.dll
  81. if ((Get-WebConfiguration "/system.webServer/security/isapiCgiRestriction/add[@path='$iisAbsolutePath\msmdpump.dll']") -eq $null)
  82. {
  83.     Write-Host -NoNewline "Adding ISAPI CGI Restriction for $iisAbsolutePath\msmdpump.dll … "
  84.     Add-WebConfiguration "/system.webServer/security/isapiCgiRestriction" -PSPath:IIS:\\  -Value @{path="$iisAbsolutePath\msmdpump.dll"}
  85.     Write-Host " Done!" -ForegroundColor Green
  86. }
  87. #Enabling ISAPI CGI Restriction for msmdpump.dll
  88. Write-Host -NoNewline "Updating existing ISAPI CGI Restriction … "
  89. Set-WebConfiguration "/system.webServer/security/isapiCgiRestriction/add[@path='$iisAbsolutePath\msmdpump.dll']/@allowed" -PSPath:IIS:\\ -Value "True"
  90. Set-WebConfiguration "/system.webServer/security/isapiCgiRestriction/add[@path='$iisAbsolutePath\msmdpump.dll']/@description" -PSPath:IIS:\\ -Value "msmdpump.dll for SSAS"
  91. Write-Host " Done!" -ForegroundColor Green
  92.  
  93.  
  94. #Adding ISAPI Handler to WebSite
  95. Write-Host -NoNewline "Adding ISAPI Handler … "
  96. Add-WebConfiguration /system.webServer/handlers -PSPath $iisSite.PSPath -Value @{name="msmdpump"; path="*.dll"; verb="*"; modules="IsapiModule"; scriptProcessor="$iisAbsolutePath\msmdpump.dll"; resourceType="File"; preCondition="bitness64"}
  97. Write-Host " Done!" -ForegroundColor Green
  98.  
  99. #enable Windows and Basic Authentication
  100. Write-Host -NoNewline "Setting Authentication Providers … "
  101. #need to Unlock sections first
  102. Set-WebConfiguration /system.webServer/security/authentication/anonymousAuthentication  MACHINE/WEBROOT/APPHOST -Metadata overrideMode -Value Allow
  103. Set-WebConfiguration /system.webServer/security/authentication/windowsAuthentication  MACHINE/WEBROOT/APPHOST -Metadata overrideMode -Value Allow
  104. Set-WebConfiguration /system.webServer/security/authentication/basicAuthentication  MACHINE/WEBROOT/APPHOST -Metadata overrideMode -Value Allow
  105.  
  106. Set-WebConfiguration /system.webServer/security/authentication/anonymousAuthentication -PSPath $iisSite.PSPath -Value @{enabled=$iisAuthAnonymousEnabled}
  107. Set-WebConfiguration /system.webServer/security/authentication/windowsAuthentication -PSPath $iisSite.PSPath -Value @{enabled=$iisAuthWindowsEnabled}
  108. Set-WebConfiguration /system.webServer/security/authentication/basicAuthentication -PSPath $iisSite.PSPath -Value @{enabled=$iisAuthBasicEnabled}
  109. Write-Host " Done!" -ForegroundColor Green
  110.  
  111. #Adding Default Document
  112. Write-Host -NoNewline "Adding Default Document msmdpump.dll … "
  113. Add-WebConfiguration /system.webServer/defaultDocument/files -PSPath $iisSite.PSPath -atIndex 0 -Value @{value="msmdpump.dll"}
  114. Write-Host " Done!" -ForegroundColor Green
  115.  
  116. #Updating OLAP Server Settings
  117. Write-Host -NoNewline "Updating OLAP Server Settings … "
  118. [xml]$msmdpump = Get-Content "$iisAbsolutePath\msmdpump.ini"
  119. $msmdpump.ConfigurationSettings.ServerName = $olapServerName
  120. $msmdpump.ConfigurationSettings.SessionTimeout = $olapSessionTimeout
  121. $msmdpump.ConfigurationSettings.ConnectionPoolSize = $olapConnectionPoolSize
  122. $msmdpump.Save("$iisAbsolutePath\msmdpump.ini")
  123. Write-Host " Done!" -ForegroundColor Green
  124.  
  125. Write-Host "Everything done! "
  126. Write-Host "The SSAS server can now be accessed via http://$env:computername`:$iisPort"

 

The script can also be downloaded here.

The process of setting up HTTP connectivity is the same for Analysis Services Multidimensional and Tabular so the script works for both scenarios, just change the server name accordingly.

Restoring a SSAS Tabular Model to Power Pivot

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It is a very common scenario to create a SSAS Tabular Model out of an Power Pivot Model contained in an Excel workbook. Microsoft even created an wizard (or actually a separate Visual Studio project) that supports you doing this. Even further, this process is also a major part of Microsoft’s strategy to cover Personal BI, Team BI and Corporate BI within one technology being xVelocity. This all works just fine but there may also be scenarios where you need to do it the other way round – converting a Tabular model to Power Pivot. Several use-cases come into my mind but I am sure that the most important one is to making data available offline for e.g. sales people to take it with them on their every day work. And in this blog post I will show how this can be done!

But before taking a closer look into how this can be accomplished, lets first see how the import from Power Pivot to SSAS Tabular works. To do this start SQL Server Profiler and connect to your tabular instance. Then create a new Tabular project in Visual Studio based on an existing Power Pivot workbook. At this point you will notice a lot of events happening on our SSAS Tabular server. The most important event for us is “Command End” with the EventSubclass “9 – restore”:
RestoreFromPowerPivot

SSAS actually restores a backup from a “Model.abf” backup file which is located in our project directory that we just created:
BackupExtractedFromPowerPivot

So far so good – but where does this file come from?

Well, the origin of the file has to be our Excel workbook that we imported. Knowing that all new office formats ending with “x” (.xlsx, .docx, …) are basically ZIP files, we can inspect our original Excel workbook by simply rename it to “.zip”. This allows us to browse the Excel file structure:
ExcelUnzipped

We will find a folder called “xl” which contains a sub-folder called “model”. This folder contains one item called “item.data”. If you take a closer look at the file size you may realize that both, the “Model.abf” file that we restored and the “item.data” file from our Excel workbook have the exact same size:
FileProperties

A Coincidence? Not really!

What happens behind the scenes when you import a Power Pivot model into SSAS Tabular is that this “item.data” file gets copied into your project directory and is renamed to “Model.abf” and then restored to the SSAS Tabular workspace instance by using an standard database restore.

Having this information probably makes you think: If it works in one direction, why wouldn’t it also work the other way round? And it does!

So here are the steps that you need to do in order to restore your SSAS Tabular backup into an Excel Power Pivot workbook:

  1. Create a backup of your SSAS Tabular database and rename it to “item.data”
  2. Create an empty Excel workbook and add a simple linked table to the Excel data model (which is actually Power Pivot).
    This is necessary to tell Excel that the workbook contains a Power Pivot model which has to be loaded once the file is opened.
  3. Close the Excel workbook and rename it from “MyFile.xlsx” to “MyFile.xlsx.zip”
  4. Open the .zip-file in Windows Explorer and locate the “\xl\model\”-folder
  5. Replace the “item.data” file with the file that you created in step 1.
  6. Rename the .zip-file back to “MyFile.xlsx”
  7. Open the Excel Workbook
  8. Voilá! You can now work with the data model as with any other Power Pivot model!

I tested this with a SSAS Tabular backup from SQL Server 2012 SP1 being restored to the streamed version of Excel from Office 365 with the latest version of Power Pivot. I assume that it also works with older versions but have not tested all combinations yet.

There are also some features that will not work, for example roles. If your Tabular database contains roles you will not be able to use this approach. Excel will complain that the Power Pivot model is broken. However, other Tabular features like partitions actually work with the little limitation that you cannot change them later on in the Power Pivot model or process them separately:
PowerPivotPartitions
Another thing to note here is that only up to 3 partitions are allowed, otherwise you will get the same error as for roles. I think this is related to the limitation of 3 partitions for SQL Server Analysis Services Standard Edition as Chris Webb described here.

Besides these obvious features there are also some other cool things that you can do in Tabular which are not possible in Power Pivot. Most (or actually all) of them are accessible only by using BIDS Helper – a great THANK YOU to the developers of BIDS Helper at this point!
BIDS Helper enables you to add classical multidimensional features also to Tabular models which is not possible using standard Visual Studio only. Those include:

  • DisplayFolders
  • Translations (metadata only)
  • Actions
  • …

I tested it for DisplayFolders and Actions and both are working also in Power Pivot after the backup was restored and I further assume that all the other things will also work just fine.
Simply keep in mind that Power Pivot is basically a fully featured Analysis Services instance running within Excel!

For my (and your) convenience I also created a little PowerShell script that does all the work:

  1. # Load the assembly with the ZipFile class
  2. [System.Reflection.Assembly]::LoadWithPartialName("System.IO.Compression.FileSystem") | Out-Null
  3. # Load the assembly to access Analysis Services
  4. [System.Reflection.Assembly]::LoadWithPartialName("Microsoft.AnalysisServices") | Out-Null
  5. # Also install "Analysis Services PowerShell" according to http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh213141.aspx
  6.  
  7. # INPUT-Variables, change these to match your environment
  8. $rootFolder = "D:\Test_PowerShell\"
  9. $emptyExcelFile = $rootFolder + "EmptyExcel.xlsx"
  10. $ssasServerName = "localhost\TAB2012"
  11. $ssasDatabaseName = "AdventureWorks"
  12.  
  13. # internal variables
  14. $newExcelFile = $rootFolder + $ssasDatabaseName + ".xlsx"
  15. $newExcelFileZip = $newExcelFile + ".zip"
  16. $unzipFolder = $rootFolder + "TEMP_ExcelUnzipped"
  17. $backupFile = $rootFolder + $ssasDatabaseName + ".abf"
  18. $itemDestination = $unzipFolder + "\xl\model\item.data"
  19.  
  20. # Copy the empty Excel file and rename it to ".zip"
  21. Copy-Item -Path $emptyExcelFile -Destination $newExcelFileZip
  22.  
  23. # Unzip the file using the ZipFile class
  24. [System.IO.Compression.ZipFile]::ExtractToDirectory($newExcelFileZip, $unzipFolder)
  25.  
  26. # Create a backup of the SSAS Tabular database
  27. Backup-ASDatabase -Server $ssasServerName -Name $ssasDatabaseName -BackupFile $backupFile -AllowOverwrite -ApplyCompression
  28.  
  29. # Copy the backup-file to our extracted Excel folder structure
  30. Copy-Item -Path $backupFile -Destination $itemDestination -Force
  31.  
  32. # Check if the target file exists and delete it
  33. if (Test-Path -Path $newExcelFile) { Remove-Item -Path $newExcelFile }
  34.  
  35. # Zip the folder-structure again using the ZipFile class and rename it to ".xlsx"
  36. [System.IO.Compression.ZipFile]::CreateFromDirectory($unzipFolder, $newExcelFile)
  37.  
  38. # Cleanup the unecessary files
  39. Remove-Item -Path $unzipFolder -Recurse
  40. Remove-Item -Path $backupFile
  41. Remove-Item -Path $newExcelFileZip

The last thing to mention here is that I don’t know if this is officially supported in any way by Microsoft – actually I am pretty sure it is not – so watch out what you are doing and don’t complain if something is not working as expected.

Applied Basket Analysis in Power Pivot using DAX

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Basket Analysis is a very common analysis especially for online shops. Most online shops make use of it to make you buy products that “Others also bought …”. Whenever you view a specific product “Product A” from the online shop, basket analysis allows the shop to show you further products that other customers bought together with “Product A”. Its basically like taking a look into other customers shopping baskets. In this blog post I will show how this can be done using Power Pivot. Alberto Ferrari already blogged about it here some time ago and showed a solution for Power Pivot v1. There is also dedicated chapter in the whitepaper The Many-to-Many Revolution 2.0 which deals with Basket Analysis, already in Power Pivot v2. Power Pivot v2 already made the formula much more readable and also much faster in terms of performance. Though, there are still some things that I would like to add.

Lets take a look at the initial data model first:Model_Old

First of all we do not want to modify this model but just extend it so that all previously created measures, calculations and, most important, the reports still work. So the only thing we do is to add our Product-tables again but with a different name. Note that I also added the Subcategory and Category tables in order to allow Basket Analysis also by the Product-Category hierarchy. As we further do not want to break anything we only use an inactive relationship to our ‘Internet Sales’ fact table.

After adding the tables the model looks as follows:Model_New

The next and actually last thing to do is to add the following calculated measure:

Sold in same Order :=
CALCULATE (
COUNTROWS ( ‘Internet Sales’ ),
CALCULATETABLE (
SUMMARIZE (
‘Internet Sales’,
‘Internet Sales’[Sales Order Number]
),
ALL ( ‘Product’ ),
USERELATIONSHIP ( ‘Internet Sales’[ProductKey], ‘Filtered Product’[ProductKey] )
)
)

(formatted using DAX Formatter)

The inner CALCULATETABLE returns a list/table of all [Sales Order Numbers] where a ‘Filtered Product’ was sold and uses this table to extend the filter on the ‘Internet Sales’ table. It is also important to use ALL(‘Product’) here otherwise we would have two filters on the same column ([ProductKey]) which would always result in an empty table. Doing a COUNTROWS finally returns all for all baskets where the filtered product was sold.
We could also change ‘Internet Sales'[Sales Order Number] to ‘Internet Sales'[CustomerKey] in order to analyze what other customers bought also in different baskets (This was done for Example 3). The whole SUMMARIZE-function could also be replaced by VALUES(‘Internet Sales'[Sales Order Number]). I used SUMMARIZE here as I had better experiences with it in terms of performance in the past, though, this may depend on your data. The calculation itself also works with all kind of columns and hierarchies, regardless whether its from table ‘Product’, ‘Filtered Product’, or any other table!

So what can we finally do with this neat formula?

1) Classic Basket Analysis – “Others also bought …”:
Result_ClassicBasketAnalysis

As we can see Hydration Packs are more often sold together with Mountain Bikes opposed to Road Bikes and Touring Bikes. We could also use a slicer on ‘Filtered Product Subcategory’=”Accessories” in order to see how often Accessories are sold together with other products. You may analyze by Color and Product Category:
Result_ByColor
As we can see people that buy black bikes are more likely to buy red helmets than blue helmets.

2) Basket Analysis Matrix:
What may also be important for us is which products are sold together the most often? This can be achieved by pulling ‘Product’ on rows and ‘Filtered Product’ on columns. By further applying conditional formatting we can identify correlations pretty easy:
Result_BasketMatrix
Water Bottles are very often sold together with Bottle Cages – well, not really a surprise. Again, you can also use all kind of hierarchies here for your analysis.
This is what the whole matrix looks like:
Result_BasketMatrixFull
The big blank section in the middle are our Bikes. This tells us that there is no customer that bought two bikes in the same order/basket.

For this analysis I used an extended version of the calculation above to filter out values where ‘Product’ = ‘Filtered Product’ as of course every product is sold within its own basket:

BasketMatrix :=
IF (
MIN ( ‘Product’[ProductKey] )
<> MIN ( ‘Filtered Product’[ProductKey] ),
[Sold in same Order]
)

3) Find Customers that have not bough a common product yet
As we now know from the above analysis which products are very often bought together we can also analyze which customers do not fall in this pattern – e.g. customers who have bough a Water Bottle but have not bought a Bottle Cage yet. Again we can extend our base-calculation to achieve this:

Not Sold to same Customer :=
IF (
NOT ( ISBLANK ( [Sum SA] ) ) && NOT ( [Sold to same Customer] ),
“Not Sold Yet”
)

The first part checks if the selected ‘Product’ was sold to the customer at all and the second part checks if the ‘Filtered Product’ was not sold to the customer yet. In that case we return “Not Sold Yet”, and otherwise  BLANK() which is the default if the third parameter is omitted. That’s the result:
Result_NotSoldToCustomer
Aaron Phillips has bought a Water Bottle but no Mountain Bottle Cage nor a Road Bottle Cage – maybe we should send him some advertisement material on Bottle Cages? Smile

 

As you can see there are a lot of analyses possible on top of that little measure that we created originally. All work with any kind of grouping or hierarchy that you may have and no change to your data model is necessary, just a little extension.

And that’s it – Basket Analysis made easy using Power Pivot and DAX!

Downloads:

Sample Excel Workbook with all Examples: BasketAnalysis.xlsx
Sample PowerBI Desktop file with all Examples (DAX only, no Visuals): BasketAnalysis.pbix