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Day: July 18, 2022

Mapping Income vs Rent in Counties

Published 2022-07-18 by Kevin Feasel

Rick Pack updates a package to support a project:

I am happy to announce a contribution to the biscale package that makes printing shorter labels using SI prefixes (e.g., 1,000,003 => 1M and 1,324 => 1.3k) far easier. This makes printing the legend in an attractive easier, although you can tell by the picture above that I still struggle with optimal uses of the cowplot package’s draw_plot(). I would love for the legend and map to be centered under the title.

The new si_levels argument for bi_class_breaks() takes a logical value of TRUE or FALSE for either a single or two-unit vector, with a single unit vector causing the specified value to be applied to both the X and Y variables. This matches Prener’s convenient functionality for the number of digits function dig_lab, as he requested in the Github Issue I created for this addition. Note that si_levels rounds the input number, if appropriate, based on the digits indicated by dig_lab, which defaults to 3.

Click through to get access to the update, as well as to see some of the visuals Rick put together with it.

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Extracting Numbers from a Stacked Density Plot

Published 2022-07-18 by Kevin Feasel

Derek Jones digs into an image:

A month or so ago, I found a graph showing a percentage of PCs having a given range of memory installed, between March 2000 and April 2020, on a TechTalk page of PC Matic; it had the form of a stacked density plot. This kind of installed memory data is rare, how could I get the underlying values (a previous post covers extracting data from a heatmap)?

Read on for an interesting attempt at reverse-engineering the original numbers used to create an image. H/T R-Bloggers.

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Recreating a Shiny App with Plumber and React

Published 2022-07-18 by Kevin Feasel

Liam Kalita continues a series:

We’ll assume you have a basic understanding of HTML and JavaScript, but you should be able to follow along with a basic programming background. Having a little knowledge of Linux shell commands would be beneficial for some of the terminal commands for generating directories, but you can also do most of it in VSCode using the user interface instead.

Let’s attempt an exercise in creating a small React+Plumber app; this will be very similar to a previous blog post recreating this tutorial {shiny} application using Python Flask.

Click through to see how to build the app. The final part of the series will show how to host the app.

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Tips for the Tidyverse

Published 2022-07-18 by Kevin Feasel

Tomaz Kastrun shares some advice:

Tidyverse provides a handful of great functions for operating across multiple columns simultaneously. Across is a function, that makes it easy to apply the same transformation over numerous columns in summarise() and mutate() functions.

Across accepts two arguments; a) array of columns and b) function or list of functions to be applied to selected columns.

Check out eight tips for working with packages in R’s tidyverse.

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Argument {0} is Null or Empty in Azure Data Factory

Published 2022-07-18 by Kevin Feasel

Richard Swinbank diagnoses a problem:

I encountered this error recently while using Azure Data Factory’s (ADF) new(ish) Script activity to run a SQL query. It took me a while to find a fix, and when it happened again two weeks later I’d completely forgotten it. With a bit of luck, writing it down will help me remember next time – and if it helps you too, great

Read on to see what the problem was and how Richard solved it.

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The Siren Song of Platform-Portable SQL

Published 2022-07-18 by Kevin Feasel

Shane O’Neill gets on the soapbox:

Part of why I’m ranting about database-ubiquitousness SQL instead of ORMs is that I’ve also witnessed SQL code that has to work everywhere

I’m going to call this SQL “DUh SQL” from now on since I only have so many vowels on my keyboard and shouldn’t waste them re-writing the word “ubiquitousness”

Them: “Nope, we can’t use DATEFROMPARTS; it’s not available in other databases! Yeah, we use GETDATE() everywhere; what’s your point? WHAT!?!”

I strongly agree with this. Lowest common denominator SQL just means your code is likely to perform poorly in all environments. Even if you know you need to support multiple platforms, it’s better to get the most out of each and have whichever data access layer implementation you inject figure out the details of how to do it.

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Working with Synapse Link for SQL

Published 2022-07-18 by Kevin Feasel

Steve Howard gives us an overview of a preview:

Azure Synapse Link for SQL greatly simplifies analytics pipelines as Microsoft manages the orchestration process for you. Since being announced at Microsoft Build, many of you have had the opportunity to try it out in a POC so now seems like a good time to take a deep dive on some implementation aspects that may save you time later.

This blog post will assume you have experience with Synapse dedicated SQL pools and that you have some basic working knowledge of Synapse Link for SQL from following the quick start or from doing an initial POC.

Looking at this, I am a bit concerned about what it means to sync actively changing tables, especially ones large enough to benefit from being in a dedicated SQL pool. “Just reload all the data” may be the right answer but it doesn’t sound like a convenient one.

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SQL Server 2012 Migration Plan

Published 2022-07-18 by Kevin Feasel

Lee Markum says farewell to SQL Server 2012:

Today is end of support for SQL Server 2012. May it rest in peace.

Migrating a SQL Server can be a lot of work. There are so many things to think about. It’s a pain.

It is a pain but Lee does have a few tips on how to get started with a migration plan. And as you get closer to present-day SQL Server (remember: there were 4 versions of SQL Server released after 2012 and we’re getting another one this year), being able to set up distributed Availability Groups for version migration can make life a lot easier for you.

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Quality Checks for Power BI Visuals

Published 2022-07-18 by Kevin Feasel

Meagan Longoria has a checklist:

For more formal enterprise Power BI development, many people have a checklist to ensure data acquisition and data modeling quality and performance. Fewer people have a checklist for their data visualization. I’d like to offer some ideas for quality checks on the visual design of your Power BI report. I’ll update this list as I get feedback or new ideas.

Read on for the list, as it’s a good one. For the most part, these also apply to visuals created in other tools.

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