Karan Gulati (SSAS Maestro)

Microsoft Azure Essential: Azure ML Free book is pretty informative if you wanted to learn about ML.

Link as follow:

Download the PDF (5.84 MB)

Additionally I recommend to go through free courser from University of Washington available through coursera.

Step by Step course of going in depth of Machine Learning.

Link as follow:

https://www.coursera.org/course/machlearning

PDF Document download link CLICK – Here

Generally when we apply System Level patches we tend to reboot Machine / Server multiple times based on Patch requirement. In this blog I am trying to cover points we need to keep in mind while applying System Level Patches:

Reboot can cause SSAS Database Corruption (refer this link for more details), before applying a OS / System level  Patch or Rebooting Server on which SSAS Service is running (MOLAP / Tabular or Power Pivot Instance) refer steps as follow:

SQL Server Configuration Manager (Recommended)

1) Go to start and  Open SQL Server Configuration Manager (Run as Administrator)

2) Look for SQL Server Services and look for SQL Server Analysis Services on the right window

3) Right Click on SQL Server Analysis Services and Stop Service

4) Once the service is stopped successfully then apply Patch or Reboot Server and after reboot open SQL Server Configuration Manager to check if service came online (generally it does if Service is configured for Automatic start) if it doesn’t come online then right click on SQL Server Analysis Services and start Service

Services.msc

If due to what so ever reasons you don’t find SQL Server Configuration Manager or not able to open it due to any errors, in that case follow steps as follow:

1) Open Services.msc

2) Look for SQL Analysis Services, right click on service and stop services

4) Once the service is stopped successfully then apply Patch or Reboot Server and after reboot open Services.msc to check if service came online (generally it does if Service is configured for Automatic start) if it doesn’t come online then right click on SQL Server Analysis Services and start Service

Note:

* You can follow these steps for all other SQL Services as well (Exception Clustered Services / Always On – follow SQL documentation for guidance)

*These steps can be followed for SSAS Service before applying any OS Patch or doing any Maintenance Task

This white paper describes how business intelligence developers can apply query and processing performance-tuning techniques to their OLAP solutions running on Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Services.

This paper is based on the performance guide for 2008 R2 and has been reviewed and updated to validate performance on SQL Server 2012 and SQL Server 2014.

To read the white paper, please download the Word document Analysis Services MOLAP Performance Guide for SQL Server 2012 and 2014.

Background

You have a Role which got only Read Permission for Tabular Database with users who can only query Databases which means they can use any client tool and should be able to query Tabular Databases from any tool which they prefer like SSMS, SSRS, PPS, Excel, etc.

Roles and Permission shown in Figure 1 and Figure 2

Figure 1: Role Permission

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Figure 2: Test User member of Role which got Read Permission

Issue

When users from Read Only Role are trying to connect SQL Management Studio they are not able to see Databases on which they have Read Permission but if they do the same thing in an Instance of MOLAP they are able the to see the Databases on left side under Databases tree of Management Studio as shown in Figure 3, if you notice databases are not displayed for Test_Karan user.

Figure 3: Databases are not Displayed

Assessment: From TechNet Article – Roles (SSAS Tabular) we understand its an expected behavior

So what’s an option you have when you want to query Tabular Database with DAX or MDX and Databases are not getting displayed in Management, answer is simple – just click on MDX Query in the Management Studio as show in Figure 4

Figure 4: Click MDX and you will find that you will be able to Query Database on which you have Read Permission as shown in Figure 5

Figure 5: Though you are not able to see all databases but you can change the database which you need to query.

Conclusion

In MOLAP when you had Read Permission you were able to see those Databases in Management Studio but in Tabular Instance you cant see any more its by deign, in this post I have tried to show something simple which we generally tend to miss.

Yes, tabular server supports .Net Provider but only for those Data Sources which are mentioned in this article –  Data Sources Supported (SSAS Tabular)

Take an example of Oracle, if you select Oracle in “Table Import Wizard” and click on Next, you will find Connect to an Oracle Database Windows -> on that windows select Advanced and it will provide  an option of Selecting Providers, if you notice in screenshot as follow you can see Oracle Data Provider for .Net is present.

What about other data sources which are not appearing in the Table Import Wizard Relational Databases List, for such sources you can use Others (Oledb/ODBC)

This option should work if you are able to connect to your Data Source using ODBC, I have tested with SQL Engine and it worked like charm and same manner I had tested with Hadoop (HDInsight) as well

2) If ODBC Providers supported by Tabular Server, then why its not working for me?

ODBC is supported by Tabular Server but you need to configure 2 DSN one for 32 BIT and second for 64 BIT but with same name, otherwise you will get an error message while importing data.

Why we need 2 ODBC DSN?

32 Bit is for SSDT and 64 BIT is used by Tabular Engine while importing data in Tabular Server, further explained in this post Post Link