Table of Contents

Object properties reference

  • 2026-10-05
  • Jeroen ter Heerdt
Applies to:
  • ✔ Tabular Editor 2
  • Tabular Editor 3
    ✔ Desktop
    ✔ Business
    ✔ Enterprise
Note

This page was created with the help of AI.

Every object in a semantic model, such as a table, a column or a measure, has a set of properties. These properties come from the Tabular Object Model (TOM), the object model that Analysis Services, Power BI and Fabric use to define semantic models. The Properties view shows them, and C# scripts read and write them through the Scripting API.

This reference describes each property that the Properties view shows. When Tabular Editor has a feature for a property, such as an editor, a Best Practice Analyzer (BPA) rule or a C# script, the entry links to it.

To change a property, select one or more objects in the TOM Explorer view and edit the value in the Properties view. When you select several objects, the new value applies to all of them. See Editing properties.

How this reference is organized

Common properties describes the properties that most objects have, such as Name, Description and Annotations. Each of the other pages covers one family of related objects:

Page Objects
Common properties Properties shared by most objects
Model properties Model
Table properties Table, calculated table, calculation group table
Column properties Data column, calculated column, calculated table column, alternate of, variation
Measure and KPI properties Measure, KPI
Calculation group properties Calculation group, calculation item
Hierarchy and level properties Hierarchy, level
Relationship properties Relationship
Partition properties Partition, M partition, entity partition, policy range partition, refresh policy, data coverage definition
Data source and expression properties Provider and structured data sources, shared expression, query group, data binding hint
Role and security properties Role, table permission, role members
Perspective and culture properties Perspective, culture
Calendar properties Calendar, time-related column group, time unit column association
Function and set properties User-defined function, set

Each page has a section per object. The section starts with links to the common properties of the object, followed by one entry per property. Within each object, the properties are listed by category, in the order the Properties view shows them when Categorized is selected. The categories are:

  • Basic: the properties you change most often, such as the name, the description and the format string.
  • Metadata: information about the object, such as the object type or the error message. Most of these properties are read-only.
  • Options: properties that change how the object behaves, such as expressions, summarization or sort order.
  • Translations, Perspectives, Security: per-culture translations, perspective membership and per-role security settings.

Some objects have other categories, such as Data Access Options on the model.

The heading of each entry is the property's name as shown in the Properties view. The line under the heading gives the property's TOM name, its type and its category:

Display name TomName · type · Category

The TOM name is the name you use in a C# script. For a few properties, the Tabular Model Definition Language (TMDL) uses another name, for example TMDL saves a measure's FormatStringExpression as formatStringDefinition.

When they apply, these parts follow the category, in this order:

  • read-only: you can't change the value.
  • compatibility level NNNN+: the minimum compatibility level of the model, for example compatibility level 1540+.
  • a marker for a property that Tabular Editor adds. See Properties that Tabular Editor adds.

For example, the entry for Lineage Tag starts with:

Lineage Tag LineageTag · string · Options · compatibility level 1540+

Properties that depend on the model

The Properties view hides the properties that don't apply to the current model. Which properties appear depends on:

  • the compatibility level of the model. Many properties need a minimum level, for example LineageTag needs 1540 or higher. To see or change the compatibility level, select the model and expand Database in the Properties view.
  • the compatibility mode of the model. Some properties exist only for Power BI and Fabric models, or only for Analysis Services models.
  • the state of the object. Some properties appear only when another property has a certain value. For example, the properties of a refresh policy appear only when the table has one.

Properties that Tabular Editor adds

Almost every property in the Properties view is a TOM property, which is saved in the model and visible to every tool that reads the model. Tabular Editor adds a few properties of its own. The meta line marks them as follows:

Marker Meaning Saved in the model?
computed Tabular Editor calculates the value for display, for example DaxObjectFullName or ObjectTypeName. No
shortcut to … Shows or edits a TOM property of another object. For example, SourceType on a table shows the source type of the table's first partition. Yes, as the TOM property it points to
stored as an annotation Tabular Editor saves the value in an annotation on the object, for example TableGroup. Yes, as an annotation that only Tabular Editor reads

See also