Microsoft Azure Documentation

Overview of Azure Analysis Services

Azure Analysis Services is a fully managed Platform as a Service (PaaS) that provides enterprise-grade data modeling capabilities. It’s designed to deliver semantic data models that enable business intelligence (BI) applications and reporting tools to interpret complex data from diverse sources.

Key Features and Benefits:

• Scalable Performance: Offers flexible scaling options to accommodate growing data volumes and user concurrency, ensuring fast query performance for your BI solutions.
• Hybrid Data Integration: Seamlessly integrates with various on-premises and cloud data sources, allowing you to leverage your existing data investments.
• Enterprise-Grade Security: Implements robust security features, including role-based access control, to protect sensitive data.
• Compatibility: Fully compatible with SQL Server Analysis Services tabular and multidimensional models, facilitating migration and adoption.
• Simplified Management: As a PaaS offering, it handles infrastructure management, patching, and updates, allowing you to focus on data modeling.

Use Cases:

Azure Analysis Services is ideal for scenarios requiring advanced analytics and reporting, such as:

• Creating a single source of truth for key business metrics.
• Enabling self-service BI for business users through tools like Power BI, Excel, and Tableau.
• Building complex financial reporting solutions.
• Analyzing operational data to drive business insights.

How it Works:

You create tabular or multidimensional data models using tools like SQL Server Data Tools (SSDT) or Visual Studio. These models define relationships, calculations, and hierarchies. Azure Analysis Services hosts these models, making them accessible to client applications via industry-standard protocols like DAX (Data Analysis Expressions) and MDX (Multidimensional Expressions).

Example of a DAX Query:

SELECT
    [Product].[Category] ON COLUMNS,
    [Date].[Calendar Year] ON ROWS
FROM
    [AdventureWorks]
WHERE
    ([Measures].[Internet Sales Amount])
        

Getting Started:

To get started with Azure Analysis Services, you can create a new instance in the Azure portal. You’ll then connect to your instance using tools like SSDT or Power BI Desktop to build and deploy your data models.

Learn More on Microsoft Learn