Press "Enter" to skip to content

Author: Kevin Feasel

Power BI and Eventual Browser Development

Chris Webb talks about the present and the future:

Turning the question around, however, leads you to some aspects of the question that haven’t been fully explored. Instead of asking “Can I run Power BI Desktop on my Mac?”, you can instead ask “Can I do all of my Power BI development using only a browser?”. At Microsoft our long-term goal is to make all Power BI development web-based, but how close are we to that goal?

Read on for Chris’s answer.

Comments closed

Executing SQL Queries in Files against Postgres

Salman Ahmed automates query execution:

In PostgreSQL, there are several ways to execute queries, and one of them is by executing queries from SQL files. This approach allows users to manage and store their SQL queries separately and make debugging and development simpler. Using SQL files also helps in replication of database schemas. This blog discusses how to execute queries from SQL files in PostgreSQL.

Read on to see how you can use the psql command line tool to do just that.

Comments closed

Diving into the Microsoft Fabric Copy Activity

Reza Rad does more than copies:

Copy Activity is one of the most commonly used activities in Microsoft Fabric’s Data Factory Pipeline. The Copy Activity copies the data from a source to a destination. However, there is more to that rather than just a simple copy. In this article, you will learn what Copy Activity is, its rationale, how it works, and its configuration options.

Reza has a video, as well as a demo-heavy full-length article on the topic.

Comments closed

Managing Plot Parameters in R

Steven Sanderson switches up a visual:

When it comes to data visualization in R, the par() function is an indispensable tool that often goes overlooked. This function allows you to control various graphical parameters, unleashing a world of customization possibilities for your plots. In this blog post, we’ll demystify the par() function, break down its syntax, and provide you with hands-on examples to help you create stunning visualizations.

Click through to check it out. My loyalties definitely lie with ggplot2 for static visual development in R but it’s definitely not the only way to get images to look the way you want them.

Comments closed

Creating a Simple Date Dimension in Databricks

Chen Hirsh builds a table:

A date dimension is extremely useful and is required by most BI applications. This kind of dimension has a key of time level (day, month, etc.), and attributes that describe it such as year, month, etc. In your BI model, you join this dimension to facts on their date fields, to aggregate from day level to week, month, and year.

In this post, I will demonstrate how to create a date dimension on Azure Databricks using Python. A link to the complete Databricks notebook is at the end of the post.

Check out the code, as well as explanation, in that post.

Comments closed

Combining Cosmos DB and Azure Search

Hasan Savran does some looking:

In my previous post, I discussed the process of establishing a Free-text search for Azure Cosmos DB. Towards the end, I demonstrated how to carry out a free-text search using the Azure Portal. Now, I will guide you on how to perform this search using code. To perform this search by code, I created a basic console application and added Azure.Search.Documents and Microsoft.Azure.Cosmos.

Click through for that demonstration.

Comments closed

From Join to Lookup in KQL on Power BI

Dany Hoter gives us a workaround:

Many users who try  ADX in direct query mode encounter errors right away.

The errors  complain about lack of memory.

 If the tables are small enough, it may work but still performance will not be as advertised on TV.

The reason in most cases is the behavior of joins in ADX as they are created by PBI.

In this article I’ll show different approaches to joining tables as used by PBI for related tables or as can be expressed in KQL in general.

I created a special table in the help cluster with 31 million rows that is big enough to demonstrate the performance differences between the variations.

Read the whole thing. This one’s a little surprising to me.

Comments closed