In 2012, I picked up a copy of Teo Lachev’s “Applied Analysis Services.” The book featured how Microsoft was pulling together Excel, Power View, Power Pivot, Tabular Modeling and the new DAX Language (Data Analysis eXpressions). The traditional OLAP SSAS MDX cube wasn’t going away but the new hardware options and increased need for self service meant a new technology was required. DAX uses standard Excel formula syntax. This provided business users with a way to extended Excel logic, formulas and calculations. The power of Excel with the promise of self service BI is pretty compelling.
During my time at Qlik (2012-2017), Microsoft continued to build and expand it’s products. With the Tabular model , Microsoft adopted a “columnstore indexing” strategy using Vertipaq. This allowed for much more data to be available on disk and in-memory.
For more info visit: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/analysis-services/
