About

This site is published by Paul Turley and is based upon my opinions and perspectives.  These are not the opinions or responsibililty of my employer, Microsoft or any other vendor, my associates, clients, family, friends, my dog or anybody else.  If I’m right, I’m right and if I’m wrong, I’m wrong.  Please don’t make any critical business decisions or change the course of any life-altering events based upon what you read on my blog.  To do so would be really dumb and I can’t accept responsibility for it.

If you have a differing opinon or  if you think any information I have posted is wrong or unclear, you are welcome and encouraged to respond in a respectful and professional manner to comment, provide feedback and to contribute for the benefit of the community.  At my descretion, I will allow or remove comments.  If you are trying to sell something, please go away.  Otherwise, you are welcome to return and visit often.

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20 thoughts on “About”

  1. There seems to be a missing resource image file in the download zip file for paginated report recipes. This file is needed to follow the instructions in chapter 09 – “customizing gauges with images”, where you can learn how to embed a background image in your gauge. The file name is speedometer005

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  2. An impactful article or book has the potential to alter the lives of countless individuals. Thank you for sharing valuable information. I hope you continue to update it and I will be sure to keep following you.

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  3. Hi Paul,

    I am working on a SSRS report where the grouping is done to group the records in to multiple tabs/worksheets. When the report is exported to excel, the worksheets has the default name (Sheet1, Sheet2, Sheet3,…). Here I want to override the default worksheet name with (Tab1, Tab2, Tab3, …). The number of tabs/worksheets varies each time depending on the parameter selection by the user. How to address this?

    Thanks
    Karthik

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  4. To be honest i love your blog.
    if you have time for my question, how can i add bullet point in side the power bi paginated report by using custom code functions expression? i tried a lot but i can not fix it .

    Reply

    1. Demeke, I’m so sorry that I missed this comment. I normally only see comments made on blog posts and not pages, or sent using the contact form. You can add bullets to a report by using HTML formatted text in a textbox.Add a placeholder and then choose HTML markup type. I believe that the tag for bullets is: Bullet Text

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      1. …funny. The example text is interprtted and can’t be displayed. The tag should be “li” (for “list”) between angle brackets.

  6. I was wondering what your take is on Dan Linstead’s “Data Vault” approach as opposed to Kimball’s DW approach? It seems sensible to me, but I don’t have enough experience with either to make an informed decision as to when I would something like that.

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    1. I am familiar with the concept of the data vault and I think it addresses some important needs. I had a client who shifted gears and went down that path after architecting the first phase of their EDW and realized it didn’t address all their reporting needs. There are different data warehouse philosophies that exist for good reason, many of which are driven by specific businesses or industry requirements like auditing and historical tracking. In some solutions, it makes sense to collect snapshots of source data into a staging area or operational data store – sort pf a dumping ground so you can see the business state as it was at a point in time. The operational store might be separate from the data warehouse or it might be an integral component of the warehouse. But, again it depends on the business needs. Kimball’s notion of a “single version of the truth”, a principle I strongly believe in and promote, makes sense as long as everyone can agree on a version of the truth. Otherwise, we have to contend with what the truth WAS, IS and might be in the future – which, as I understand it, is the point of the data vault. So, we may potentially be talking about three different data stores: the ODS, EDW and dimensional data mart. Doing analytics over modern big data stores introduce the same basic problem if making order out of chaos.
      There is often a difference between a data warehouse and a dimensional data mart. Back to my original point in this post; ideally, if the data mart exists as a star/snowflake schema, that solves the problem of non-conformity in the semantic model (again, talking about SSAS) as opposed to going directly to the source or a non-conformed copy of the source data. One way or another, the data must be conformed to work in a model.

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  9. Hi Paul,

    I was wondering if you know of a way to get rid of blank spaces/lines between two nested tables. Re-sizing the nested/child tablix within a main tablix to .06, the smallest value it can have, still leave about a line of space and a solid line between the records within the main tablix.

    Thank you for your help. I wanted to buy your SSRS Recipes book, but it is out of print.

    Reply

    1. HB
      If you could put together a simple example and upload to a public file share (e.g. OneDrive, DropBox, etc.), I’d be happy to take a look. Just reply and send a link.

      The recipes book is available in the Kindle edition which is what may people prefer now. Many publishers are moving to e-book only editions after the initial print book sales.

      Reply

  10. Hi Paul!

    I need to do a migration from ssas traditional model to the tabular model, Where can I download or buy the solidq migration tool?

    Thank you

    Reply

  12. I’m working through SQL 2012 Reporting Services, Could you direct me to how to restore the Adventure Works DW Multidimensional ABF file download (for examples in Chapters 6 & 7)?
    I’m using SQL 2012 Developer

    Reply

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