SQL or M? – SSAS Partitions in Power Query/M
This is a continuation of this post In the data platform industry, we have been working with SQL for decades. …
SQL or M? – SSAS Partitions Using SQL Server Table-Valued Functions (UDFs)
[ Related posts in this series: SQL, M or DAX: When Does it Matter? SQL, M or Dax? – part…
Hands-on Workshops at the Pacific Northwest Power BI Symposium
Please join Power BI authors and community leaders for an afternoon and evening of deep learning. Featured presenters include “Guy…
SQL, M or DAX: When Does it Matter?
[ Related posts in this series: SQL, M or DAX: When Does it Matter? SQL, M or Dax? – part…
BI Industry, BI Projects, Business Analytics, DAX, Microsoft BI Platform, Power BI, Power Query, SQL Server, T-SQL
SQL, M or Dax? – part 2
This is a post about a post about a post. Thanks to those of you who are entering comments in the original May 12 post titled SQL, M or DAX? This is a popular topic. And thanks to Adam Saxton for mentioning this post in his Guy in A Cube Weekly Roundup.
SQL, M or DAX?
We live in a world of choices and we have many tools at our disposal. In Microsoft Business Intelligence solutions using tools like Power BI and SQL Server Analysis Services, you have at least three different ways to perform data collection, transformations and calculations. A question I get all the time is which database or BI tool should be used to perform routine tasks. Is it best to shape and transform data at the source, in Power Query using M script, or in the data model using DAX?
In this series, I’ll demonstrate options for creating utility and dimension tables, columns and calculations using each option and discuss the advantages, disadvantages and recommended practice for each.
Facebook Live Pop-up Session Recording
A big THANK YOU to everyone who attended the Facebook Live Pop-up session today. This was a fun event and…
PASS Facebook Live Pop-up Expert Series
There are some great learning opportunities available from PASS and I am exciting to participate in two online events this…
How to add KPI indicators to a Table in Power BI
Yesterday a friend asked for a little help getting started with Power BI. He’s a DBA and system administrator and wanted to cut his teeth on Power BI with a really simple dashboard-style scorecard report. Using a list of database servers with license expiration dates, he thought it would be a simple matter to calculate and show the expiration status for each server using a simple traffic light indicator. The envisioned server list might look something like this:
Makes perfect sense, right? This is a basic use case and a good application for simple KPIs; with the one minor caveat that POWER BI DOESN’T SUPPORT THIS!
This topic has become a bit of a soapbox topic for me
Tour of the Power BI Solution Advisor
As a follow-up to my earlier post titled “Nine Realms of Power BI and the Power BI Solution Advisor“, I’ve…
Using Power Query “M” To Encode Text As Numbers
I worked through a brain-teaser on a consulting project today that I thought I’d share in case it was useful for someone else in the community. We needed to convert application user names into an encoded format that would preserve case sensitive comparison. Here’s the story… A client of mine is using Power BI Desktop to munge data from several different source systems to create analytic reports.
Two-Phase BI Projects
I’m going to step out of the frame just a moment to make a soapbox speech: I’m a believer in two-phase Business Intelligence project design. What that means in a few words is that we rapidly work through a quick design, building a functional pilot or proof-of-concept to produce some reports that demonstrate the capability of the solution.
Nine Realms of Power BI and the Power BI Solution Advisor
The use cases for Power BI, along with its many companion technologies, are numerous. Many organizations are exploring the use of Power BI in enterprise-scale solutions and struggling with the myriad of options and choices. I’ve grouped these options into nine categories that I call the “Nine Realms of Power BI”. Along with my friends at CSG Pro, I have created a Power BI-based tool that you can use as a sort-of survey to assess your business and technical requirements and then recommend a reference solution architecture in one of these categories. The options, components and reference architectures, capabilities, limits and cost guidelines are detailed later in this presentation. I’ll also take you on a tour of the solution advisor tool, which I have published for public Internet users.
This is a presentation I prepared for the Redmond SQL Saturday that I will also use for some future presentations.
Power BI Global Hackathon Contest Results
The results of last month’s Power BI Global Hackathon are in! The Hackathon was facilitated by our our PUG here…
Managing Multiple Power BI Desktop Application Versions
Question: How many different versions of Power BI Desktop might you have installed at one time? Answer: Three (or more)…
T-SQL for Performance and Accuracy – Vern Rabe: A preconference essential for anyone using SQL Server
SQL Saturday Preconference: February 9th, 2018 in Redmond, WA Do you think you write T-SQL queries that perform well? Think…