Neal Waterstreet

Some things I've learned about Data Warehousing, Business Intelligence and other stuff too

Try the statement later?

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I got an error message I’d never seen before while altering a database.

Database is in transition. Try the statement later. (Microsoft SQL Server, Error: 952)

Try the statement later? What does that mean? I altered a column in a test database and immediately tried to take it offline. That is when I got the error. After searching for the message I found this. One of the solutions suggested was to search sys.dm_exec_requests for an alter process on that database. Sure enough it was suspended. I killed the SPID and the database was back online pretty quickly.

DAX: Divide By Zero Error

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Like most languages, you will probably run into the divide by zero issue at some point with DAX. I checked around and saw some different solutions people are using. The best example I found was this pattern by Kasper de Jonge.

IF([Measure 2] <> 0, [Measure 1] / [Measure 2], 0).

I also looked at the DIVIDE() function for DAX on MSDN. It has the following syntax:

DIVIDE(numerator, denominator [,alternateresult])

Much less code than before!

I ran a very informal test with 1M rows to compare the two. There doesn’t appear to be any difference in performance based on my test, however I should do it again using more data. I checked into it a little more and noticed that both appear to throw the same errors. For instance, when the numerator or denominator is text both methods result in an error.

Has anyone else come across this? There is not too much information out there about error checking in DAX.