Paginated Reports Recipe eBook – first two recipes
First and most importantly, I want to acknowledge and thank these contributing authors who wrote report recipes and working samples…
Paginated Reports eBook Finally Released
At last, the second edition of “SQL Server Report Recipes” written by Paul Turley, Robert Bruckner and a host of…
Doing Power BI the Right Way: 4. Power Query design best practices
Part of the the series: Doing Power BI the Right Way (link) Although my professional focus is building enterprise-scale BI solutions,…
Doing Power BI the Right Way: 4. Power Query in Dataflows or Power BI Desktop
Part of the the series: Doing Power BI the Right Way (link) Power BI, more than any other Microsoft product in…
A First Look at Gen 2 Composite Models with Live Power BI Datasets
About three years ago when the data model development engineers from the Power BI product team told me they were…
Power BI: The Week in Graphics
If you’re like me right now, you need a distraction. I got started on a new blog and tweet about…
Doing Power BI the Right Way: 5. Data Modeling Essentials & Best Practices (2 of 2)
Part of the the series: Doing Power BI the Right Way (link) Data modeling 201-301 – continued from part 1…
Doing Power BI the Right Way: 5. Data Modeling Essentials & Best Practices (1 of 2)
Part of the the series: Doing Power BI the Right Way (link) Data Modeling 101: part 1 (more advanced techniques…
Composite Models Gen 2 and DirectQuery over Power BI Datasets
My wife bought me a nice telescope for Christmas. I’ve wanted one since I was a kid. We opened gifts…
Power BI Expert Resources
Where to go for best practice advice for Power BI: The Data Gods One of the most common questions I…
Doing Power BI the Right Way: 7. Planning for separation – data models and reports
Back in the day, when we created BI solutions, reports and data models were separate. If you created a cube or Tabular model with Analysis Services, it was developed with Visual Studio and deployed to a server. Reports could be authored and deployed to the report server, separately. Now, with Power BI Desktop, you author your data model and report in the same development space and then deploy the whole kit and kaboodle to the service at once.
Doing Power BI the Right Way: 6. Validating data model results – Part 2
Moving important business data into a data model for analytic reporting can often be a two-edge sword. Data retrieval is fast and can support all kinds of analytic trending and comparisons. But, data in the model may be one or two layers away from the original source data, making it more challenging to compare with familiar user reports. Often the first validation effort after transforming and loading data into the model and then visualizing the initial results is having a business user say “yeah, that looks about right.” Then, sometime later after more development and extensive user testing, the feedback might be “hmm, that looks a bit off.” …not exactly scientific.
I have been doing a lot of data validation work lately – both formally and informally. Informally: Validating calculation results from a Power BI data model is just a normal part of the development process. Formally: After developing and delivering an entire business dashboard solution, a formal validation process is used to validate the ongoing results after future data refresh cycles and to certify reports so that business leaders know they can trust them.
Doing Power BI the Right Way: 6. Validating data model results – Part 1
Moving important business data into a data model for analytic reporting can often be a two-edge sword. Data retrieval is fast and can support all kinds of analytic trending and comparisons. But, data in the model may be one or two layers away from the original source data, making it more challenging to compare with familiar user reports. Often the first validation effort after transforming and loading data into the model and then visualizing the initial results is having a business user say “yeah, that looks about right.” Then, sometime later after more development and extensive user testing, the feedback might be “hmm, that looks a bit off.” …not exactly scientific.
I have been doing a lot of data validation work lately – both formally and informally. Informally: Validating calculation results from a Power BI data model is just a normal part of the development process. Formally: After developing and delivering an entire business dashboard solution, a formal validation process is used to validate the ongoing results after future data refresh cycles and to certify reports so that business leaders know they can trust them.
Doing Power BI the Right Way: 9. Choosing the right report type: analytic or paginated
Writing this blog series while juggling other commitments has brought me to two realizations: 1. Posting articles in the series will be sporadic, and 2. The topics will be in fairly random order based on the projects I’m working on and the topics that are most top-of-mind at the time.
This brings me to the subject of this post: Paginated and Analytic reports.
Doing Power BI the Right Way: 2. Preparing, shaping & transforming source data
Second post in the “Doing Power BI the Right Way” series. In a business intelligence solution, data must be shaped and transformed. Your data is rarely, if ever, going to be in the right format for analytic reporting.