SSAS tabular import converts measures to fields

[markduffill]

My experience when connecting to a tabular Analysis Services data source is that if I choose import, all measures in the model are converted to fields in Power BI. I have seen a comment in a post on a slightly different topic that seems to confirm this.

This means that the cube measures do not behave as measures in Power BI, and I would need to recreate the measures as Power BI measures, which makes the cube measures redundant.

I want to be able to use the cube measures, as I can create the cubes programatically using the the Tabular Objects Model API - I do this to provide a simple front end that allows end users to select tables and columns to include in the cube (I would do this in Power BI if I could but currently there is no API to support this).

I can create a live connection to the Analysis Services and the cube measures do work correctly in this case, but this results in other constraints, eg I cannot edit the model at all in Power BI and I'm resticted to a single cube database as the data source.

What would be great is if Power BI could recognise the cube measures when importing and convert these to Poiwer BI measures. Does anyone know if this is ever likely to be a feature, or if there is some other solution?

[tannera]

It seems to set the measures as a "String" data type when importing from SSAS .

Solution: to change the data type back, you can use the query editor and change the column's data type to 'numbers'.    

[v-qiuyu-msft]

Hi @markduffill,

As you know, to get SSAS measures as Power BI desktop measures, live connection is required, but live connection limits connect to another cube database. In your scenario, you can try to use DirectQuery to connect to underlying database, retrieve tables and perform data modeling in desktop instead of SSAS side.

Meanwhile, you can post a idea in Power BI Ideas forum.

Best Regards,

Qiuyun Yu