Alberto Ferrari

Alberto started working with SQL Server in 2000 and immediately his interest focused on Business Intelligence. He and Marco Russo created sqlbi.com, where they publish extensive content about Business Intelligence. Alberto published several books about Analysis Services, Power BI, and Power Pivot. He is a Microsoft MVP and he earned the SSAS Maestro title, the highest level of certification on Microsoft Analysis Services technology. Today, Alberto's main activities are in the delivery of DAX and data modeling workshops for Power BI and Analysis Services all around the world. Alberto offers consulting services on large and complex data warehouses to provide assessments and validation of project analysis or to perform specific problem-solving activities. Alberto is a well-known speaker at many international conferences, like PASS Summit, Sqlbits, and Microsoft Ignite. He loves to be on stage both at large events and at smaller user groups meetings, exchanging ideas with other SQL and BI fans. When traveling for work, he likes to engage with local user groups to provide evening sessions about his favorite topics. Thus, you can easily meet Alberto by looking up local Power BI user groups during scheduled courses. Outside of SQLBI, most of Alberto's personal time is spent practicing video games, in the vain hope of eventually beating his son.

Alberto Ferrari's Training Days

Improve performance with DAX and Power BISQLBits 2023

The goal of this tutorial is to discover possible bottlenecks analyzing the execution of DAX calculations using tools such as DAX Studio and VertiPaq Analyzer. You will see how to capture and read the most important information from a DAX query plan. With this knowledge, the next step is to evaluate different strategies to improve the query performance. During this training, you will learn the most common patterns that could have performance issues and what are possible workarounds to solve them

From 0 to DAXSQLBits 2022

During this one-day workshop, the authors of the best seller books The Definitive Guide to DAX, The Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Analysis Services: The BISM Tabular Model, and Building Data Models with Power Pivot, will guide you in the process of learning the DAX language, through many examples and scenarios that will help you understand the important concepts of DAX and how to leverage them in the everyday work.

From 0 to DAXSQLBits 2019

During this workshop, the authors of the best seller books on SSAS and Power Pivot will guide you in the process of learning DAX, through many examples and scenarios, to help you understand the important concepts of DAX and how to leverage them.

Data Modeling with Power BISQLBits 2018

This pre-con introduces the basic techniques of shaping data models in Power BI. We’ll assess real-world examples that you look at your reports in a different way, and show you that with the right data model, the correct answer is always a simple one

From 0 to DAXSQLBits 2017

DAX Introduction aimed to Power BI users and architects, SSAS developers and Excel users. Starts from zero and introduces the main concepts of the language through many examples and lectures.

Unleashing the power in Power BISQLBits 2016

In this seminar, you are guided in creating a solution using all the features of Power BI. Starting from scratch, you see all what is needed to import and integrate data from many sources and to create a data model following the best practices.

From 0 to DAXSQLBits 2013

In this course you will be guided in the process of learning the DAX language, through many examples and scenarios that will help you understand what are the important concepts of DAX and how to leverage them in your everyday work.

Alberto Ferrari's Sessions

Understanding relationships in Power BISQLBits 2019

Relationships are present in any data model. Multiple relationships between the same tables and bidirectional filters increase the complexity of this topic. In this session, we discover the complexity behind relationships in complex models.

Aggregations in Power BISQLBits 2019

We introduce the concept of aggregation, we show several examples of their usage understanding the advantages and the limitations of aggregations, with the goal of building a solid understanding on how and when to use the feature in data models.

DAX Optimization ExamplesSQLBits 2018

In this session we analyze some DAX expressions and Tabular models and, through the usage of DAX Studio and some understanding of the VertiPaq model, we will look at how to optimize them.

Optimizing multi-billion row tables in TabularSQLBits 2017

In this session we will show you how Tabular performs when you are querying a model with many billions rows, conduct a complete analysis of the model searching for optimization ideas and implement them on the fly, so to look at the effect of using th

Optimizing & Analyzing DAX Query PlansSQLBits 2014

Alberto will start with a simple query and he will perform on stage all the necessary steps to optimize it, showing you the tools ant the techniques used to identify the bottleneck and to fix the performance issues

Advanced Modeling with Analysis Services TabularSQLBits 2014

This session goes beyond the classical star schema modeling, exploring new techniques to model data with Power Pivot and SSAS Tabular. You will see how brute-force power in DAX allows different data models than those used in SSAS Multidimensional

DAX Query Engine InternalsSQLBits 2013

In this session, we will analyze the way DAX solves filtering. Starting from simple queries, we will follow the steps DAX does with the filter context, discovering the internals of the query engine of DAX.

Time Intelligence in DAXSQLBits 2012

We are going to show how to compute classical time intelligence with the built-in DAX functions. Then, we will show some more complex time intelligence formulas that require to think out of the box, using advanced data modeling techniques.

PowerPivot Advanced Data ModelingSQLBits 2011

During this session we are going to analyze common business problems that require and advanced usage of DAX functions and data modeling with PowerPivot.

Many-to-Many Relationships in DAXSQLBits 2011

Deep dive into the handling of many to many relationships in DAX. How to make them work and how to optimize their speed thorugh many patterns and live examples of M2M usage.