Power Pivot & The Tabular Model: Star Schema, Relationships, Hierarchies, KPIs

Power Pivot & The Tabular Model is the fifth volume of the Advanced Excel & Data Modeling series — a complete, production-oriented guide to the engine behind Power Pivot, Power BI, SSAS Tabular, and Fabric. It opens with the VertiPaq engine and star schema design — why one fact table surrounded by dimensions is the fastest, cleanest layout. Then it moves through relationships (one-to-many, many-to-many bridges, role-playing dimensions), calculated columns vs measures, hierarchies, and KPIs. The advanced section covers the Date table, parent-child hierarchies, fact table grain, many-to-many allocation, and model compression. The final parts handle performance (VertiPaq compression, DAX patterns for the storage engine, query plans, DAX Studio), deployment (SSAS, Azure Analysis Services, Fabric, Direct Lake), governance (RLS, OLS, versioning), and ten full case studies: retail, financial consolidation, sales analytics, manufacturing OEE, HR, healthcare, marketing attribution, migration to Fabric, an optimization audit, and a ten-step model build checklist. Every chapter is code-first, with schema diagrams, comparison tables, and real DAX you can paste and run. By the end you will think in stars and grains, not spreadsheets.