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Day: May 11, 2023

Integrating VBA and R Code

Published 2023-05-11 by Kevin Feasel

Steven Sanderson has become Dr. Moreau. Part 1 shows how to call R code from VBA:

This line defines a subroutine called “CallRnorm”. A subroutine is a block of code that can be executed repeatedly from any part of the code, and it starts with the “Sub” keyword followed by the subroutine name and any arguments in parentheses.

Part 2, as you might expect, covers the obverse:

Yesterday I posted on using VBA to execute R code that is written inside of the VBA script. So today, I will go over a simple example on executing an R script from VBA. So let’s get into the code and what it does.

First, let’s look at the Function called “Run_R_Script”. This function takes four arguments, where the first two are mandatory, and the last two are optional.

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Fixing ORA-26086 in Azure Data Factory Pipelines

Published 2023-05-11 by Kevin Feasel

Emanuele Meazzo fixes a problem:

Turns out, ADF is rightfully trying to insert the rows in bulk, but Oracle doesn’t like it when the sink table has triggers, falling back to row by row insertion seems it’s too much to ask, so you end up with the error.
Searching on the good ‘ol wide web you’ll encounter this solution, that basically tells you to disable bulkload for the whole Oracle connection by setting EnableBulkLoad=0 in the connection string.
That wouldn’t work for me, because I’m bulk loading just fine everywhere else, so either I had to suffer slower performance on all the other inserts by disabling the bulk insert, or I had to create an additional and separate Linked Service to Oracle with the bulk insert disabled: doable but adding maintenance overhead when things change (two secrets to manage instead of one).

My solution? Super dumb.

Read on for a copy of the error message and Emanuele’s solution. There are two philosophies with regard to dumb solutions:

  • If a solution is dumb and it works, it isn’t dumb.
  • If a solution is dumb and it works, it’s still a dumb solution and you just got lucky this time.

I’m not quite sure under which category this falls.

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Calculating Reservation-Based Savings in Azure

Published 2023-05-11 by Kevin Feasel

Saira Shaik reserves some instances:

I have created this dashboard to display the savings made due to the purchase of Reservations or Savings Plans or by signing the agreement with Microsoft to get Azure Commitment Discounts (ACD).
This dashboard is helpful for Customers who:

  • Purchased Reservations or
  • Purchased Savings Plan or
  • Signed Monthly Azure Consumption Commitment (MACC) and got a special discounted price.


Customers can view their savings by uploading the Amortized files into this Power BI file.

Click through to se what the dashboard includes and how it all works. Then, check out Saira’s GitHub repo for the template.

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An Overview of Azure Synapse Analytics

Published 2023-05-11 by Kevin Feasel

Kevin Chant offers a primer on Azure Synapse Analytics:

In reality, there are a lot of features within Azure Synapse Analytics where your SQL Server background can prove to be useful.

By the end of this post, you will have a good overview of Azure Synapse Analytics. In addition, where your SQL Server background can prove to be useful. Plus, there are plenty of links included in this post.

This is not the slimmest of primers, which makes sense given how broad Synapse is.

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Which Backups are in a File?

Published 2023-05-11 by Kevin Feasel

Steve Jones didn’t keep ’em separated:

I had a question on multiple backups in a file and had to check my syntax. This post shows how to see which backups are in a file.

Note: Don’t do this. Put backups in separate files.

Still, if you didn’t follow Steve’s good advice here (or you have an edge case situation where you, for some reason, need to store multiple backups in the same file), there’s a way to check what’s in a file.

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Formatting Visuals in Power BI Desktop

Published 2023-05-11 by Kevin Feasel

Reza Rad shows off the new visual formatter in Power BI Desktop:

Where is the Format visual option in the new Power BI Desktop? There is a simple answer to this question, which I explained in this blog and video. This change applied from March 2023 version of Power BI Desktop, and by the time you read this article, it might be at general availability and the only way to format a visual in the Power BI Desktop.

I do hope they also keep the old way of formatting visuals, as there appear to be fewer clicks involved.

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