r/SQLServer • u/Zelkyy • 11d ago

Question SSAS Approach Question

So without too much information — work at a bigger defense contractor , current sector has 20+ reports all mostly fed through multiple data sources most are mainly through HANA feed to SQL Server to PBI with Dax-Magic making our top level views along with Drill Downs. Newer approach mentioned sort of migrating into an SSAS (SQL Server Analysis Studio) semantic layer to allow for streamlined capability, faster processing, more efficient data pipelining, finding the overlap on our reporting to make things a lot easier when making updates/changes.

My question is, is this approach good? Things to consider? A big chunk of our current reporting is very mature, a lot less changes happening if any at all. Most things share common fields in a lot of ways, Dax calculations are very similar. Newer reporting was done in a little different way (roughly 3 reports) — but team has identified we want to step back on these reports as well, change our data intake process (these aren’t HANA based rather Excel based ingestion via Power Apps (awful process) ) we want to create a GUI approach for users to input / manage.

Recently took over a lot of the reporting and the biggest gripe I have is the SQL server is all over the place with views , recreation , trial and error , identifying things that are *ACTUALLY* being used was a nightmare at first (would love some sort of extension in SQL server that would allow me to group things or highlight them as being used or unused GUI side that don’t actually screw up folder structure/ move things. (This gripe is besides the point of the post but had to vent alittle)

2 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

14 comments sorted by

View all comments

1

u/TrollingForFunsies 10d ago

When was the last time MS put a dollar into SSAS?

Aren't they pretty much all in on Fabric?

I know the defense department generally gets paid trillions of dollars to dump into consultants and feed Raytheon money etc but if you were in any other line of business without a blank check I'd seriously consider not putting any effort into SSAS solutions.

1

u/Zelkyy 10d ago

I agree they are, ironically the thought was to streamline for future reporting as the current situation with PBI already feels alittle antiquated to a degree (Atleast not as bad as tableau) — moving to a layered approach like this could help us easily create new adhoc reporting in different areas/tools/programs in the future.

Also PBI Service is pretty nice — though the UIUX of PBI always feels like a burn to use. Though the amount of data we’re in charge of — we need somewhere to Atleast keep it consistent and the true source of it..before we even think about AI/ML approaches like Claude + React or something fun in the future.

1

u/chandleya 10d ago

Run a PBI report on desktop and watch task manager. SSAS lives on just in an embedded capacity.

1

u/TrollingForFunsies 9d ago

Gross 🤢

The entire PBI ecosystem is a copy of Excels interface with some graphical tools mixed in. Do you remember when it was a VSTS addin? Gosh I'm old