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Some people in my company have gone to great lengths to remove & characters from data and measure names in our Tabular models. I wasn't around when they made this decision, but it destroys readability in our financial reporting. Instead of R&D and SG&A in our statements, we have RD and SGA.

The offenders are no longer around to answer for their crimes. I am trying to convince my co-workers to re-add the &, but they won't budge without some idea why this was done in the first place. My best guess is that a consultant told them not to use & in models. I think they meant in object names only, but our team got carried away. I've been able to find this page that says & was a reserved character in Compatibility Level 1100, but that goes back to SQL Server 2012! I think our lowest environment is SSAS 2017.

Am I missing anything or can we re-add & to our data and measure names? Is there any reason you would avoid the use of & anywhere in an SSAS tabular model? Links to documentation appreciated!

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https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/analysis-services/multidimensional-models/olap-physical/object-naming-rules-analysis-services?view=asallproducts-allversions

Exceptions: When Reserved Characters are Allowed

As noted, databases of a specific modality and compatibility level can have object names that include reserved characters. Dimension attribute, hierarchy, level, measure and KPI object names can include reserved characters, for tabular databases (1103 or higher) that allow the use of extended characters:

Server mode and database compatibility level Reserved characters allowed?

enter image description here Databases can have a ModelType of default. Default is equivalent to multidimensional, and thus does not support the use of reserved characters in column names.