sharing my experiences with the Microsoft data platform, Fabric, enterprise Power BI, SQL Server BI, Data Modeling, SSAS Design, SSRS, Dashboards & Visualization since 2009
When starting a Power BI project, you have many choices to make. Decisions like how to source your data, where and how to create queries to cleanse, transform and reshape the data; where and how to create calculations and the nuances of modeling are just the tip of the iceberg.
This week, Christian Wade from Microsoft announced on the Microsoft Power BI blog that a new ribbon “External Tools” was added to the preview features of Power BI Desktop in the July update. In earlier posts, Christian has promoted community developed tools such as Tabular Editor, DAX Studio and the ALM Toolkit that can be used as replacements or extensions to the Power BI development experience. These three tools are autmatically added to the ribbon by default if they are installed, but you can add your own applications by following the instructions in the this Microsoft document titled Using external tools in Power BI.
This is an introduction to a series of posts and pages that will provide a comprehensive set of best practices for successful Power BI solutions. In previous posts. Let’s start with a simplified flowchart and condensed decision tree. This first whiteboard drawing is the first half of the Power BI design process, ending with the data model, before measures, visualization and solution delivery. There is a lot more but I think this is a good starting point. Let’s start the conversation here and then I will enhance this post with a more complete list of topics.
…for BI data model development.
For several years, Visual Studio has been my go-to tool for designing semantic data models used for Business Intelligent reporting. Back in 2005, I used the Business Intelligence Development Studio (BIDS) Visual Studio add-in for SSIS, SSRS and SSAS projects to develop BI solutions with multidimensional cubes. In 2012 when Microsoft began the transition from on-disk cubes to in-memory SSAS Tabular models, I used SQL Server Data Tools (SSDT) to create tabular models. It was a rocky road at first. The Tabular design was fragile to put it mildly.
Using the XMLA endpoint, the Power BI Premium service now includes the capabilities of SQL Server Analysis & Azure Analysis Services combined with newer data modeling capabilities of Power BI. Data models published to the Power BI service now support version control, scripted builds and team application life cycle management, enterprise IT tooling and scripted object management.
In my ongoing quest to present the Coronavirus data from the CDC and WHO in useful ways, I have created…
Is there any good news in the COVID-19 Coronavirus data? Everyone is familiar with the tragic growing number cases and fatalities globally and in most countries that have high populations. However, several countries have increasing recovery rates. You can click here to view the new report shown in the image below.
The experts keep taking about looking for “the peak”, when the number of people recovering from infection increases faster than new cases. We’re not there yet but where is the recovery rate increasing? The “Recovery Rate (3 Day Change)” measure is the Recovery Rate (e.g. The number of confirmed cases divided by the number of recovered cases) from three days prior to the most recent report date. This report ranks countries by this measure.
For a new series of posts to include tutorials and “how to” demonstrations for Power BI, SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) and Paginated Reports, I need your help to know what questions are most compelling and top of mind.
Please scroll to the Comments section at the bottom of this post and help me create a list with your questions and suggested topics.
There are now three different ways to access the COVID-19 Daily Updates Power BI dataset & report:
This is a Power BI report that I have developed and published with public access to the web to be shared with anyone who needs access to this information. It contains daily updates from the Center for Disease Control using data curated by the John Hopkins University Center for Systems Science & Engineering. To the best of our collective ability, the data is accurate but I cannot make any guarantees. Please validate with other sources before making any decisions with this information.
I’m very hopeful that the this report will be a valuable resource. It’s been a labor of love and as usual, considerably more work that I envisioned. But, I will continue to work on enhancements and corrections as I am able based on feedback. Please post comments here or contact me through Twitter, if you have feedback, comments and questions.
At the time of this post, the world is dealing with a serious health and economic crisis. The COVID-19 Corona Virus is impacting the lives of people around the world and in turn, it is affecting world markets and industries and many different ways. This demonstration shows you how to create a multi-layer map to correlate current outbreak case locations with your own data, using Power BI and the ESRI map visual.
This post and the video walk-through demonstrates how the order of steps added to a query can make a big performance difference and drastically effect the number of steps generated by the designer.
Activity monitoring and troubleshooting with the new logging API is focused entirely on Power BI tenant events like dashboard, interactive and paginated reports views, deployments, errors and data refresh events. This should be easier than before, enabling admins to be more proactive by track usage patterns. In a short series of blog posts, I’ll demonstrate how to build a complete activity logging and reporting solution for your entire Power BI tenant.
As I read the many posts from those in the community who I follow, I am reminded that the community…
As I continue to explore and develop best practices for managing serious business-scale Power BI solutions, I’m having conversations with recognized community leaders. Last month I chatted with Ásgeir Gunnarsson on the SQL Train ride from Portland to PASS Summit in Seattle. Ásgeir is a data platform MVP and seasoned Business Intelligence expert from Reykjavik, Iceland who works as Chief Consultant for Datheos, a Microsoft-focused BI and Analytics consultancy in Copenhagen. He leads the Icelandic Power BI User Group and PASS Chapter.