Warning: I am just sharing what worked for me in our environment in the hopes that it may help others who might hit this issue. But you should make sure to test changes like this yourself and that you have a good backups and a rollback strategy before changing your own production environments. Any changes you make to your servers are done so at your own risk.

After doing a fairly extensive round of testing we recently updated our production environment for our Power BI Report Servers to the Jan 2021 release. However unfortunately during the verification testing after the upgrade I found an issue on the production servers that had not occurred on any of our other environments.

The issue was that doing a scheduled refresh of a pbix file linked to an access file was failing with an error that “We’re sorry, an error occurred during evaluation.; Attempted to read or write protected memory” and searching for this error message only brought back hits from 2-3 years ago which were not very helpful.

The error reporting in the Report Server UI is often not very comprehensive, but even checking the RSPowerBI* logs in the Report Server log folder did not help all that much (I’ve included the relevant lines from an example of this error at the end of this post)

Initially I tried running a repair operation by re-running the Power BI Report Server installer, I could see that one of the things it checked was the Access 2016 Engine, but unfortunately even after doing a reboot the issue persisted.

Upon checking in “Add or Remove Programs” I found that the servers had both the Access 2010 and Access 2016 Engine runtimes installed. I thought this was a little odd since the 2016 version should supersede the 2010 version and these servers only run Power BI Report Server so it was not like there was other software that my have had specific requirements for the 2010 engine. So I did wonder if something had gone wrong with the registration of these 2 versions and somehow the server was expecting to run using the 2016 version, but was actually running using the 2010 version.

However upon checking our non-prod environments I found that they all had both versions installed. But by watching the installer I could see that the Jan 2021 release was definitely only installing the Access 2016 runtime. So as a test on one of our non-production environments I tried uninstalling both runtimes then only re-installing the Access 2016 Engine runtime (which I found by searching for “access 2016 engine download“).

I did not get prompted to reboot after doing the re-install of the Access 2016 engine so I simply did a stop and start of the Power BI Report Server using the Report Server Configuration Manager. After doing this refreshing one of my test reports using an Access file data source still worked. So since production was already in a broken state as far as Access refreshes were concerned I tried this same process on the production environment and this fixed our issue so we now have a fully operation install of the Jan 2021 release of Power BI Report Server.

For reference the full error message from the RSPowerBI log files is below:

2021-02-24 18:49:46.7357|ERROR|19|Error Processing Data Model Refresh: SessionId: b3c84c62-2cf0-4df0-b22c-fde90857c4b8, Status: Error Failed to refresh the model, Exception Microsoft.AnalysisServices.OperationException: Failed to save modifications to the server. Error returned: 'We're sorry, an error occurred during evaluation.;Attempted to read or write protected memory. This is often an indication that other memory is corrupt.
Attempted to read or write protected memory. This is often an indication that other memory is corrupt.
Attempted to read or write protected memory. This is often an indication that other memory is corrupt.
Attempted to read or write protected memory. This is often an indication that other memory is corrupt.
Attempted to read or write protected memory. This is often an indication that other memory is corrupt.. The exception was raised by the IDbCommand interface.
'.
at Microsoft.AnalysisServices.Tabular.Model.SaveChangesImpl(SaveOptions options)
at Microsoft.PowerBI.ReportServer.AsServer.TOMWrapper.RefreshModel(Database database)
at Microsoft.PowerBI.ReportServer.AsServer.AnalysisServicesServer.RefreshDatabase(String databaseName, IEnumerable1 dataSources, IEnumerable1 parameters, String clientSessionId)
at Microsoft.PowerBI.ReportServer.WebHost.EventHandler.AnalysisServicesDataRefresh.RefreshDatabase(AsDatabaseInfo asDatabaseInfo)
at Microsoft.PowerBI.ReportServer.WebHost.EventHandler.DataRefreshScope.<>c__DisplayClass34_0.b__0()
at Microsoft.PowerBI.ReportServer.WebHost.EventHandler.DataRefreshScope.d__33`1.MoveNext()

Updates

The following are some of the new features and improvements that you will find in v2.14 of DAX Studio

Blank Canvas Help Text

Help text has been added when the edit control is empty. This is designed to help people that are new to writing DAX queries. There are links to an article with information on writing DAX queries as well as a link to display the query builder. This help text will automatically fade away as soon as you start typing and once you no longer need it you can turn it off.

New Privacy Settings

There are new privacy settings now available in the options. We don’t recommend enabling these for general use, but if you are working with data of a highly sensitive nature and you need to ensure that DAX Studio does not send any information externally you can enable these options.

Note: DAX Studio never sends any data from your model externally.

However if the text of your queries contain sensitive information such as customer names or account numbers and you choose to use the Format DAX option that query text gets sent to daxformatter.com. And if you happen to suffer a fatal crash the crash reporter includes the option to send a screenshot and if you don’t untick the option to include the screenshot there maybe some data visible or some information in the query text.

So you as the user have complete control over any information that is sent externally. But if you work in a highly secure environment and you need to ensure that no accidental information leakage can occur then you can enable some or all of these options.

Enabled Discussions on the Github site

Discussions are a new feature on Github and this now gives us a place where people can ask questions or make suggestions without having to log a formal issue.

Multiple Queries Detected dialog

The “Multiple Queries Detected” dialog will appear when pasting in queries from Power BI Performance Analyzer that came from a Composite model. Such queries will sometimes have 2 queries where the second query is prefixed with a // SQL Query comment. The query after this comment will sometimes be SQL however if your model is a composite model over AzureAS or Power BI it might be in DAX.

New Server Timings Options

There are new options for Server Timings that help make the xmSQL text easier to understand. These new processing options are enabled by default and strip out internal IDs, Aliases and Lineage guids and highlight Formula Engine callback operations to make these events easier to understand

Other Miscellaneous Updates

• Help Ribbon updates
  • Updating link in help ribbon to Analysis Services forum
  • Adding link to Discussions https://github.com/daxstudio/daxstudio/discussions
• Query Builder moved out of preview status
• Benchmarking moved out of preview status
• Adding Query Builder documentation to daxstudio.org
• Updating AdomdClient and TOM references to v19.14
• Added retry logic when fetching Database and Model lists
• #450 Database Last Updated Datetime is now shown in local time instead of UTC (and the timezone information is displayed)
• Added keyboard short cuts in metadata pane to work with Query Builder
• #492 added description to function tooltip

Fixes

• Fixed crash when doing Replace All with an invalid RegEx expression
• Fixed crash when clicking Refresh Metadata after connection has dropped
• Fixed #469 Server Timings busy spinner was activating incorrectly when doing Clear Cache
• Fixed #467 Database Name was being incorrectly injected into all new connections when DAX Studio was opened from External Tools in Power BI Desktop
• Fixed #466 PBI XMLA connections not being parsed correctly
• Fixed #457 crashing on startup after setting view hidden objects = false in options
• Fixed #356 Clear Cache throwing errors against PBI XMLA endpoint
• Fixed #449 Connection lost during Benchmarking
• Fixed a trace timeout issue when connecting to PBI XMLA endpoint (sometimes it is still necessary to increase the default timeout to 90 seconds or more)
• Query Builder
  • Fixed a bug when filtering dates that reported an error parsing an empty string
  • Added the ability to drag KPI components into the Query Builder
  • Fixed a crash when trying to alter the expression for a dynamic format string for a calculation group item
• Fixed hang when pasting in code with extremely long lines (tens of thousands of characters)
• Fixed #451 up/down keys not work consistently
• Fixed #446 Aggregate rewrite events causing an error
• Fixed #444 to use correct culture in csv export
• Fixed #445 defaulting the selected model to the base model not the first perspective
• Fixed an issue with the trace layout options not displaying
• Fixed a bug with swap delimiters feature and block comments
• Fixed drag/drop of text not working within editor
• Fixed #475 proxy auth error when entering AAD credentials
• Fixed #485 Swap delimiters incorrectly affecting functions with periods in the name
• Fixed #486 Define Measure not using Separator specified in Options
• Fixed #497 Define Measures not working when connected to a model with active translations
• Fixed #499 “Show Objects that Reference this Column” feature did not include table name.
• Fixed #501 avoiding bug with EXCEPT function in Query Builder

Miscellaneous Crash fixes

In addition to the fixes listed above a number of other fixes have been made that should address some issues that came in via crash reports, but the majority of these reports were submitted anonymously. What this means is that for many of them it is impossible to verify that the fix has worked as we have no steps to reproduce the issue and the fix is based on assumptions and best guesses of the root cause of the issue.

If you are experiencing a regular crash or issue I would encourage you to open a bug on github so that I can help resolve your issues.

There are just a few minor updates to DAX Studio in this release

New Features

• Pasting a connection string into the server name of the Connection dialog will parse out the Data Source and Initial Catalog settings

Fixes

• #391 – issues when copying Power BI Performance data and pasting into Excel
• #393 – application crashed if you attempted to open the Initial Catalog list before specifying a server
• #394 – output to text file was not working for multiple results sets
• #397 – “All Queries” trace was not working against PowerPivot connections

DAX Studio 2.12 has just been released and I wanted to take some time to walk through some of the significant new features in this release.

The Installer is now signed with EV Certificate!

The fact that Installer now signed with an EV certificate might sound like technobabble but this should hopefully prevent all the issues and warnings people have been getting from from Windows SmartScreen when attempting to download and install DAX Studio.

A HUGE thank-you goes out to the guys at SQLBI.com. To acquire an EV certificate not only requires a financial outlay, but you also need to have a legal company entity with a physical office and financial records and things like that. Both of these things make it pretty much impossible for a free/open source tool to obtain an EV certificate on their own without assistance.

Initial Catalog option added to Connection Dialog

An Initial Catalog setting has been added to the Advanced Options in the connection dialog, if you have a very large model or slow connection (like AzureAS or VPN) then you can now choose the initial database you are connected to. This saves you having to wait for the metadata to load for the default database, then change to another database and wait for the second lot of metadata to refresh.

In future I also want to look at improving the ability for DAX Studio to automatically re-connect to dropped connections. But that will have to wait for a future release.

Format Query button updated

The Format Query button has been changed into a split-button so that you can choose the style of formatting by clicking on the bottom half of the button.

Clicking the top half of the button will still trigger the default formatting style (which can be changed in the Options menu)

Portable version

DAX Studio now has a portable download option. The portable version is just a zip file which you can unzip then run by clicking on DaxStudio.exe. This is helpful if you need to run DAX Studio on a machine where you may not have admin rights or where you do not want to run the installer.

The portable version has the following limitations:

• The Excel addin is not included (as we need to write to the registry with admin rights to register the addin with Excel)
• The Power BI Desktop External Tools feature will not work (as it requires admin rights to add the pbitools.json file under c:\program files\…)
• The ability to double click on a .dax file to open DAX Studio will not work (this also requires making registry changes to the machine)

Otherwise the portable version is identical to the installed version. Apart from the above limitations the only difference is that settings, query history, autosave files and error logs are all redirected to local files and folders underneath the folder where daxstudio.exe is launched from

Other New Features

• Added Roles and IsAdmin properties to Database tooltip that can be useful when testing security settings.

Fixes

• #378 Power BI External Tools – installer not correctly updating path in daxstudio.pbitools.json file if a non-default install location is used
• #377 exporting tables with no rows would throw an error
• #376 autosave not recovering open files for all types of crashes
• #374 improved tooltip sampling to prevent full column materialization
• Fixed crash when attempting to export using invalid manual connection string
• #381 re-connecting to a pbix file that has been closed and re-opened after launching from External Tools does not work

I’ve just pushed out a minor update for DAX Studio, it fixes a few issues I’ve received from crash reports as well as the following items:

Updates

• Adds support for the “External Tools” ribbon in Power BI Desktop

Fixes

• #373 Fixes “Define Measure” when connected to a SSAS instance without admin rights
• #372 Duplicate MyMeasures created when adding more than 1 custom measure in the Query Builder
• #367 Measure information duplicated in VPAX files
• Fixed crash when highlighting
• Fixed crash when closing last tab and connection had been lost

After many happy years on my previous blog platform I decided that it was time for a move. All my previous posts are still available at http://geekswithblogs.net/darrengosbell but from now on all my new content will be posted on this site. Although geekswithblogs.net had a bright start many years ago it is now suffering from neglect, the rss feed had unresolved issues, the comment engine and contact pages were completely broken and they don’t support https.

So I decided that now was the time to move my blog and give it a facelift in the process.