Paul Turley's SQL Server BI Blog

BASIS Band is Almost a Great Device… Almost

Paul TurleyOctober 19, 2014October 23, 2014

I started shopping for a wearable fitness band several months ago. I looked at several and was most impressed with the BASIS Band concept. It was different because it combined a device that had advanced tracking capabilities with a cloud-based service that could be expanded and improved with only server-side upgrades. What a great business model, I thought. reading the forums, I could see that the BASIS customer service folks were very responsive to feedback and feature requests. A lot of people were also very excited to see this service expand and were eagerly asking for more features and capabilities that could be added to the back-end service or software.

BI Industry, BI Projects, Business Analytics, DAX, Microsoft BI Platform, Power BI, PowerPivot, Self-service BI, SQL Server Pro Magazine, SQL Syndication, SQLServerPedia, Tabular Models

Adding and Displaying Comments to Power Pivot Results in an Excel Pivot Table

Paul TurleyOctober 5, 2014October 7, 2014

Requirement: Allow users to enter comments after they review results from a Power Pivot model and then show the comment text in the Pivot Table report results. Here’s a quick example of the final result. My example uses Flintstones characters in-place of employee or customer names and a simple measure value. After reviewing the results, the user moves to another worksheet and enters a comment for the date and person with an expiration date for the comment. After refreshing the report, each cell with a comment is indicated with a little “dog ear” and the comment is displayed by clicking the cell…

BI Industry, BI Projects, Business Analytics, Microsoft BI Platform, MVP Community, PASS, SolidQ, SQL Saturday, SQL Server, SQL Server Pro Magazine, SQL Syndication, SQLServerPedia

SQL Server MVP for a Sixth Year

Paul TurleyOctober 5, 2014October 5, 2014

Thank you to the Microsoft MVP Program for awarding me MVP for six years running! I love this program and…

Microsoft BI Platform

Oregon SQL Mastery Sessions on Friday Oct 31

Paul TurleySeptember 13, 2014October 7, 2014

We are hosting three all-day sessions on October 31st, the day before Oregon SQL Saturday in Portland. We are proud to offer the first ever SQL Saturday preconference in Portland this year.

SQL Server Internals and Data Recovery – Argenis Fernandez

Understanding Execution Plans – Hugo Kornelis

Self-Service BI with Power BI – Mark Tabladillo

Microsoft BI Platform

24 Hours of PASS Recordings

Paul TurleyAugust 7, 2014August 7, 2014

Jack Bauer would definitely approve of this 24 hour event! All the videos for the sessions at 24 Hours of…

Power BI, Power View, PowerPivot, Self-service BI, SolidQ, SQL Syndication, SQLServerPedia

So What the Heck is Power BI?

Paul TurleyAugust 6, 2014October 7, 2014

The other day a secondary family member said “we’re still on Microsoft 2010”. Another said “My friend is using Windows 2003 and can’t open a document I sent”. They were apparently talking about versions of Office products.

I get so deeply engrained in the Microsoft Business Intelligence community culture that I have to remind myself that most people don’t spend all their time keeping up with these products that are constantly in motion. And these are just Office users! When I work with BI consulting clients and business folks in the industry, it’s apparent that most people really don’t understand where these products and services begin and end.

Mark Tabladillo has done the world a service by laying out exactly what Power BI is, the products that it includes, and how to license it and get started. This is a great resource on the Microsoft MVP Program Blog that breaks it all down and helps it all make sense. Thank you, Mark!

Here’s a sample

Data Visualization, JavaScript libraries

Real-time Wind, Weather & Climate on Animated Earth Projection

Paul TurleyJuly 22, 2014October 7, 2014

When I got this link in my daily feed from FlowingData this morning, I thought this would just be yet another nifty map graphic but it’s not. It’s a very sophisticated body of work – not only cool but “earth” is a very sophisticated projection of real-time weather and climate data projected over the entire planet.

Author, Cameron Beccario, describes his work as “a visualization of global weather conditions forecast by supercomputers updated every three hours.

BI Industry, PASS, SQL Server, SQL Syndication, SQLServerPedia

Remembering Reed Jacobson

Paul TurleyJuly 16, 2014October 7, 2014

I just received some bad news and found out that a friend passed away today. Reed Jacobson was one of the early leaders in the Microsoft Business Intelligence community. Somewhere around 2004-2008 I worked with Reed at Hitachi Consulting in Seattle where we travelled, taught classes and worked on client projects together. He was one of the earliest adopters and gurus in the BI community working for a small start-up called OLAP Train who helped bring SSAS (aka “OLAP Services”) to the masses. He spoke at many conferences and taught a lot of classes.

Not only was he one of the smartest people I’ve known when it came to solving business problems with Analysis Service & MDX but he was a kind, friendly man who really enjoyed helping and connecting with people.

Microsoft BI Platform

NASCAR driver Kurt Busch’s BASIS Bio Stats

Paul TurleyJuly 15, 2014October 7, 2014

I thought I’d share this visual from the folks to produce the BASIS Band fitness tracker (recently acquired by Intel). I just ordered a BASIS Band for myself which is due to arrive from Amazon tomorrow. I just spun up a new page on my blog to showcase data visualizations and this will be the first entry…

They strapped a band on Kurt Busch, aka The Outlaw, and monitored vital biometric stats during “The Double”

Microsoft BI Platform

Book Reviews – “Power Pivot Alchemy” & “Dashboarding and Reporting with Power Pivot and Excel”

Paul TurleyJuly 1, 2014July 2, 2014

There are two relatively new books on the market from Holy Macro! Books. The first thing that I’ll point…

Microsoft BI Platform

Packt Publishing is Turning 10, Offering $10 Books

Paul TurleyJuly 1, 2014July 15, 2014

Packt has come a long way in just ten years as a leading technical publisher. I’ve had the pleasure of…

Data Visualization

Data Visualization – World Cup Team Players & Pro Teams

Paul TurleyJune 22, 2014June 22, 2014

Check out this data visualization from the New York Times that shows the team make-up of 2014 World Cup teams…

Microsoft BI Platform

On The Mend

Paul TurleyJune 22, 2014June 22, 2014

This is a just a quick post to explain why I haven’t posted for a while. I was hospitalized week…

BI Projects, Self-service BI, SolidQ, SQL Syndication, SQLServerPedia

Business Intelligence Roles and Team Composition

Paul TurleyJune 17, 2014July 15, 2014

On Business Intelligence projects of all sizes, the composition of the team is a crucial element for success. What is the organization of a functional BI team? How do the individual roles and disciplines contribute to a successful outcome? How is team composition different for self-service and business-owned BI projects? The best answer for an organization will depend on several factors including corporate culture, communication and management styles…

Business Analytics, DAX, SolidQ, SQL Server, SQL Syndication, SSAS Administration, SSAS Design, Tabular Models

SSAS Performance Logger Now Available

Paul TurleyJune 3, 2014June 5, 2014

I’ve created a simple query performance logging tool for Analysis Services, called the SSAS Performance Logger. The tool allows you…

Paul Turley's SQL Server BI Blog

BASIS Band is Almost a Great Device… Almost

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Adding and Displaying Comments to Power Pivot Results in an Excel Pivot Table

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SQL Server MVP for a Sixth Year

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Oregon SQL Mastery Sessions on Friday Oct 31

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24 Hours of PASS Recordings

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So What the Heck is Power BI?

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Real-time Wind, Weather & Climate on Animated Earth Projection

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Remembering Reed Jacobson

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NASCAR driver Kurt Busch’s BASIS Bio Stats

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Book Reviews – “Power Pivot Alchemy” & “Dashboarding and Reporting with Power Pivot and Excel”

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Packt Publishing is Turning 10, Offering $10 Books

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Data Visualization – World Cup Team Players & Pro Teams

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On The Mend

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Business Intelligence Roles and Team Composition

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SSAS Performance Logger Now Available

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