Tabular Editor 2: a desktop editor for Analysis Services and Power BI models

A desktop tool for a model format, not a database client

Tabular Editor 2.x is a free, open-source tool that lets you easily manipulate and manage measures, calculated columns, display folders, perspectives, and translations in Analysis Services Tabular and Power BI XMLA Models, from Compatibility Level 1200 and onwards. The tool is written entirely in .NET WinForms in C#.

The scope is worth being precise about, because the name suggests something broader. This is not a database client and not a general query tool. It edits the metadata of a tabular semantic model: the measures that define a metric, the calculated columns, the display folders that organise the field list in a report tool, the perspectives that expose a subset of the model, and the translation strings for localised model metadata.

The models it targets are the XMLA tabular format used by SQL Server Analysis Services, Azure Analysis Services, and Power BI Premium. The Compatibility Level 1200 floor is the point where the tabular model format became the modern one, so anything older is out of reach. That is a sensible cutoff for a tool that manipulates the model as a structured object rather than as a script of statements.

The project is MIT licensed, the primary language is C#, the home page is tabulareditor.com, and the last push to the repository was on 2026-09-11. The releases are 2.29.0 from 2026-09-11, 2.28.0 from 2026-03-02, and 2.27.2 from 2025-09-29, and the repository notes that it is being maintained by Daniel Otykier.

The 2.x and 3.x split, and where the code lives

The README has a short section headed Looking for Tabular Editor 3, and it points you to tabulareditor.com. That single line tells you the project has two halves, and this repository is the free one.

The distinction matters for anyone planning an adoption, because the two products do not have the same licence model. Tabular Editor 2 is described in its own repository as the free, open-source version, and it is what you download from the GitHub releases page. Tabular Editor 3 lives on the commercial site, and the repository here is where you end up if you were looking for the modern product and landed on the wrong one.

The repository is both the code and the issue tracker, which the repository description says explicitly: this is the code repository and issue tracker for Tabular Editor 2.X. That is a useful thing to know, because it means the discussions about the free version happen in the same place as its code, rather than in a separate tracker.

The top level of the repository shows the structure of a mature .NET desktop application, and the directory names tell you what the project is made of:

AntlrGrammars/
BPALib.csproj
Documentation/
Scripts/
TOMWrapper/
TabularEditor/
TabularEditorInstaller/
TabularEditorTest/
VersionHistory.md

TOMWrapper is the object model layer, since TOM stands for the Tabular Object Model, which is the API that exposes a tabular model's metadata. AntlrGrammars/ is the parser generator, which tells you the tool parses something textual, and given the subject that is the TOML metadata or a scripting language. Scripts/ is the scripting support, and TabularEditor/ is the WinForms application itself, with TabularEditorInstaller/ and TabularEditorTest/ alongside it. The BPALib project is the Analysis Services client library the tool talks to the server with.

The scripting story, which is the actual product

The documentation links tell you where the depth is. There is a Getting Started page, a Features at a Glance page, an Advanced Features page, an Advanced Scripting page, and an FAQ, plus a webinar on boosting SSAS productivity using Tabular Editor.

The presence of a dedicated Advanced Scripting page tells you that the scripting capability is not a footnote. And that is the right way to think about this tool. A semantic model is a large structured object with hundreds of measures and columns, and the operations a modeller performs on it are the kind that are tedious by hand: apply a naming convention across every measure, fix the format string of every measure of a particular type, set the display folder of a group of columns, add a description to every table, reorder the tabs of a partition. The UI supports doing one of those at a time. The scripting API supports doing a thousand of them in a loop.

That is the reason a modelling tool of this kind is worth having at all. A single change can be made in the Power BI interface or in Visual Studio, but a bulk change across a model is work that only pays for itself if it can be automated, and that is what the scripting layer is for.

The repository also carries the Advanced Scripting documentation as a first-class link, which tells you the tool's own authors consider the scripting surface part of the product rather than a developer extra. And the presence of a Scripts/ directory in the repository tree, separate from the application code, suggests that a good part of the shipped behaviour is script rather than compiled C#.

Version history, and how the releases are paced

The README lists a version history in the same format the project has used for years, and the dates are the interesting part.

The recent entries are 2025-09-29 for 2.27.2, 2025-09-25 for 2.27.1, 2025-09-24 for 2.27.0, then 2025-03-29 for 2.26.0, then a gap back to 2024-07-05 for 2.25.0, and 2024-04-22 for 2.24.1. The full history lives in a separate VersionHistory.md file linked from the README.

The pattern is not a fixed cadence. The 2.27 series shipped three versions inside a week, then six months of quiet, then a 2.26.0, then four more months, then a 2.25.0. That is the shape of a project whose releases are tied to the platform it targets rather than to a schedule, and it is worth factoring into an adoption plan, because there is no predictable next release date to plan around.

The most recent release, 2.29.0, came on 2026-09-11, and it is not in the README's own list, which stops at 2.27.2 in September 2025. So the list is maintained but lags the actual releases, which is a small inconsistency but also a signal that the README is edited less often than the release process runs.

The version numbering is plain semantic versioning with a 2.x major, and the 3.x product sits in a different distribution channel entirely, so an upgrade path between them is not something this repository describes.

Signing, funding, and the pieces around the code

One detail in the README is unusual for a free desktop tool and worth mentioning, because it affects whether you can deploy it. Tabular Editor 2.x, when downloaded from GitHub, is digitally signed. The certificate is kindly funded by twoday kapacity.

That matters in a corporate environment. A .NET WinForms executable that touches Analysis Services and Power BI models is exactly the kind of binary that endpoint protection and group policy will object to, and a signed binary passes through those checks without an exception request. The note about who funded the certificate is also a good sign about the project's relationship with its commercial sibling, since the same people clearly run both.

The repository has the other artefacts a long-lived project accumulates. VersionHistory.md holds the complete release history, Documentation/ holds the documentation sources, there is a _config.yml which is a Jekyll site configuration for the docs site, and a .readthedocs.yml for the Read the Docs build. There are several third-party licence files at the root, license-FastColoredTextbox.txt, license-FastWildcardMatching.txt, and license-TreeViewAdv.txt, which are the WinForms control libraries the tool uses for its text editing, wildcard matching, and tree views, plus TOMWrapperTest/ for the object model tests and a build-release.ps1 PowerShell script for the release pipeline.

The MIT licence in the LICENSE file applies to the project, while the bundled control libraries carry their own licences, which is why those files are checked in next to it rather than left to a dependency manifest.

Editorial conclusion

Adopt Tabular Editor 2 if you maintain Analysis Services or Power BI semantic models and want to script bulk changes rather than click through them. Do not adopt it for 3.x, since the README directs you to the commercial site for that. Verify first that your model is at Compatibility Level 1200 or later, because that is the stated floor for the XMLA models the tool can open.

Frequently asked questions

Official sources

1. License: MIT
2. Project website
3. README
4. Releases
5. TabularEditor/TabularEditor on GitHub