Data Mining Structure not Available in SSAS Tabular Model
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Lots of companies are comparing the SSAS Tabular vs Multi-dimensional Model. Honestly, there are tons and tons of articles already written about the differences between the two (so i don’t plan on doing that). Case in Point: http://www.sqlchick.com/entries/2012/3/4/decisions-powerpivot-ssas-tabular-or-ssas-multidimensional-m.html I recently worked in an environment where we were looking at using data-mining algorithms for product affinity analysis, linear regression and customer analysis for generating customer mailing lists. Unfortunately, way back, the decision had been made to go with Tabular model, to take advantage of the the InMemory and speed of development benefits. Now, with tabular in place, requests starts coming for analysis that requires the construction of data-mining structures akin to what is in Multi-dimensional. Unfortunately, that functionality doesn’t exist in Tabular yet, so we can’t do the analysis unless we go Multi-dimensional. Fortunately, this is not a show-stopper requirement for us but just something to be aware off. Summary: Currently, tabular model does not support data mining structures required for product affinity analysis, linear regression, customer predictive analysis, e.t.c. I’m not sure if Microsoft plans on building such functionalities into Tabular model going forward, but I just wanted to point it out incase some people are not yet aware of this short coming for Tabular.