Thread: Tabular Editor

BrianJ · March 25, 2020, 10:17pm

Another tool for the Power BI toolbox.

Brian

Tabular Editor (link)

Easily build, maintain and manage Tabular Models

Tabular Editor provides an intuitive hierarchical view of every object in your Tabular Model metadata. Columns, Measures and Hierarchies are arranged in Display Folders by default. You can edit properties of one or more objects, by (multi)selecting them in the tree. A DAX Editor with syntax highlighting lets you easily edit the expressions of Measures, Calculated Columns and Calculated Tables.

Lots of features for increased productivity

Tabular Editor lets you easily clone measures, columns, hierarchies and even entire tables. You can use CTRL+Z / CTRL+Y to undo and redo changes. You can multiselect and drag objects between Display Folders, tables and even across models (by opening multiple instances of Tabular Editor). Perspectives and translations are applied in the context of individual objects, and you can apply filters to quickly locate objects in the model. Advanced users may use scripting to support their preferred workflows, and scripts can be saved as Custom Actions for easy invocation directly in the Explorer Tree.

Build better quality Models

Tabular Editor introduces the Best Practice Analyzer. A tool that lets you define global or model-specific rules using a simple expression language. At any time, you can check whether objects in your model satisfy the rules. For example, you can create rules to check if naming conventions are kept, if metadata properties are set up correctly, if columns containing numeric values are hidden, if visible objects are exposed in perspectives, etc.

Getting started

The tool is open source and completely free. Download it from the release page to get the latest version.

If you need more information, check out the Getting Started wiki.

Downloads

BrianJ · March 25, 2020, 10:20pm

Recent blog entry by Matt Allington on introduction to Tabular Editor:

Brian

marcster_uk · March 27, 2020, 1:35pm

In a near future release for PowerBI Desktop, in Model View, there will be an additional menu item “External Tools” where ALM Toolkit, DAX Studio and Tabular Editor will be available.
https://twitter.com/Datatouille/status/1243292134800842754

BrianJ · March 27, 2020, 1:54pm

@marcster_uk,

Wow! I hadn’t seen this. Santa comes early this year!

Thanks for passing this along. Hopefully, it shows up in the April release.

Brian

marcster_uk · March 27, 2020, 2:05pm

Hopefully :-). Also along with the Conditional Formatting for totals and subtotals for table and matrix they have been working on…

marcster_uk · March 31, 2020, 5:38am

New version of Tabular Editor just released!

marcster_uk · April 2, 2020, 7:11pm

BrianJ · April 20, 2020, 10:24pm

Followup to @marcster_uk’s last post. Here’s the link to the full playlist of Tabular Editor training videos done by the program’'s author, Daniel Otykier:

Brian

marcster_uk · July 15, 2020, 2:00pm

@BrianJ - Are you enjoying Tabular Editor?.. or is that a silly question ;-).

marcster_uk · July 15, 2020, 2:09pm

Useful Script Snippets:

Best Practice Analyzer Improvements:

BrianJ · July 15, 2020, 2:16pm

@marcster_uk,

OMG! - this is better than I ever could have imagined. Per the screenshot below:

Full data model
M Code
Tables including measure tables

and crossposting this from the Calculation Groups thread:

Whoa - check this out!

This is the version of Tabular Editor that was just released this week. We finally now have a real development environment. I’m sure there are tons of other treasures buried here, but these are just a few things I found right off the bat:

you can now easily duplicate measures with a single command
you can trace your measure branching structures just by hitting F3 or selecting “Show dependencies”
DAX Formatter is built right into the editor - absolutely no excuse to ever have unformatted DAX again
if you highlight a function in your measure and click this icon, it will take you to the DAX Guide documentation for that function

Just click Save and all your edits, new/duplicated measures, etc. are saved directly back to your PBI file - no more copying back and forth.

Amazing! I’m sure there will be a tsumani of posts, videos, blog entries this week on all the features and capabilities this now provides. Can’t wait!

Brian

Greg · July 15, 2020, 3:29pm

Silly question, but what did you have to do to make the new External Tools menu visible (if anything)? I have DAX Studio 2.11 installed and can’t see it after installing the July 2020 update of Desktop… Is there an installation order or procedure?

JarrettM · July 15, 2020, 3:35pm

@Greg,

Make sure that you have this checked under “Preview Features” with the July Update.

Thanks
Jarrett

BrianJ · July 15, 2020, 3:36pm

@Greg,

There’s a 2.11.2 version update that came out this week that you’ll need to install for it to be visible. Same for Tabular Editor update this week.

Brian

Greg · July 15, 2020, 3:42pm

Thanks @BrianJ and @JarrettM … I thought I’d download the latest versions of DAX Studio and Tabular Editor and installed them, then saw your replies … all good now and visible. Sorry for the trouble.

BrianJ · July 15, 2020, 4:32pm

All,

@JarrettM is correct that you have to turn on the enhanced metadata format option in preview. Given Imke Feldmann’s serious warnings about this option, I was pretty nervous clicking on it, but couldn’t resist given the lure of the new External Tools capabilities. However, before I did it I made sure all my important Power BI reports were backed up to the cloud, since once you turn this option on the changes that it makes to the reports you open are irreversible.

Brian

Heather · July 15, 2020, 6:35pm

I agree on the concerns - and am wishing that Microsoft had made it possible for you to have this feature on for select workbooks, instead of as a Global feature.

Perhaps they will do that before it is in General Release.

BrianJ · July 15, 2020, 7:45pm

@Heather,

Or even better, make it so that it doesn’t blow up ANY of your files.

And perhaps they have - Imke’s blog entry on this is not been updated since May 12, and a lot of very smart, knowledgeable people (many of them Microsoft MVPs who get advance access to these features) haven’t raised this issue at all within their videos or blogs, so perhaps it is fixed. But until I hear that conclusively, I thought better to be safe than sorry…

Brian

Heather · July 15, 2020, 7:54pm

Always better to be safe - and particularly in a year that has been as messed up as 2020…

But I agree, it would be better if it just worked. I honestly haven’t used Dax Studio or Tabular Editor very much beyond the occasional measure/file investigation when things get slow. So I’m looking forward to learning more about these tools.

BrianJ · July 16, 2020, 6:49pm

All,

After my initial giddiness subsided, I realized that the bus dropped us off one stop short of utopia. Tabular Editor currently does not include IntelliSense, although the developer did indicate that feature is currently on his list of future enhancements and capabilities to add.

– Brian