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I have a data catalog where people can browse through the DWH tables. People can select tables and send a request to the IT team. This is in the form of a table which gives all the table names and column names that a person wants to have.

In the current situation, my team has to manually create a SSAS Tabular Model with the requested tables in Visual Studio: (Create a new model, connect to the DWH, select the requested tables and columns, assign user access and deploy the model on the analysis service.)

My question: is there somebody who knows a way to automate this process? Is it possible to create Tabular Models with scripts automatically? I've come across Tabular Model Scripting Language but I'm unsure from the documentation if it's possible to create NEW tabular models. Seems like it's only possible to script and make changes in already existing models.

Any form of suggestion or guidance will be appreciated, thanks beforehand.

Jason Aller
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Jimmy Smeijsters
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    In SSMS you can script out an entire existing model, which will show you how to automate the creation. Also you might want to consider giving the users Power BI Desktop which is specifically designed to enable self-service tabular model creation. – David Browne - Microsoft Apr 21 '22 at 14:59
  • Hi David, thanks for your response. Can you give me any documentation / tutorials or search terms where I can look for on how to script out an existing model? Besides that, the goal of the whole process is to enable Self-Service BI. The users have indeed access to Power BI Desktop but no experience in data modeling. The SSAS Tabular Model serves the purpose to offer the users a tabular model that is correct and verified by the IT team. @DavidBrowne-Microsoft – Jimmy Smeijsters Apr 21 '22 at 15:04

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Michael Kovalsky has a great solution for this on GitHub. See https://github.com/m-kovalsky/ModelAutoBuild. You start with an Excel template and then use scripting in the Tabular Editor tool to create the model. It may not have all the elements you need in your models, but it is a great starting point.

TheRizza
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