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Author: Kevin Feasel

Refreshing Power BI Report Server Reports

Published 2021-01-29 by Kevin Feasel

Aaron Nelson has some new cmdlets for us:

I just wanted to give everyone a heads-up that a new version of the ReportingServicesTools module went out last week, and it includes 3 new PowerShell functions for working with Power BI reports on a Power BI Report Server (PBIRS) instance.

You can now Create (New), Get, & Start a CacheRefreshPlan of a Power BI report deployed to a PBIRS instance.  For clarity, these only apply to reports using an Imported model, not those using Direct Query.

Click through for more detail.

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Improving Triggers

Published 2021-01-29 by Kevin Feasel

Ed Pollack tries to improve our usage of triggers:

SQL Server triggers are a subject of both functionality and controversy on any database platform. They can provide immense utility at a low cost, but are often misused by developers, DBAs, and architects alike, resulting in performance bottlenecks or maintainability challenges.

This article briefly reviews DML (data manipulation language) triggers and delves into a discussion about how triggers can be efficiently and effectively used as well as when triggers can dig developers into holes that are hard to escape.

Read the whole thing. Triggers are rather useful tools when used correctly, but it’s easy to misuse them on accident.

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PASS Under New Ownership

Published 2021-01-29 by Kevin Feasel

Steve Jones announces that Redgate is the captain now:

Redgate Software confirmed today that it has acquired the assets of the Professional Association for SQL Server (PASS), which ended operations on January 15, and will revive the Summit, continue SQLSaturdays, and make available the library of content and training sessions.

Note that this will be different from PASS as it existed, so membership in the old association doesn’t carry over to the new. If you’re interested in keeping up to date on this, check out https://www.red-gate.com/PASS.

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Modifying a Linked Entity in Power BI Dataflows

Published 2021-01-29 by Kevin Feasel

Reza Rad gives us a method to modify linked entities in Power BI dataflows:

It is not possible to change a linked entity in a dataflow in Power BI. Linked entities has to be modified only in the dataflow in which they are created. However, sometimes, you need to do a small modification to the linked entity in a chained dataflow. There is a very simple trick, In this article and video, I’ll explain how you can do that.

Read on to see how.

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Parquet 1.x Footer Content

Published 2021-01-28 by Kevin Feasel

Dmitry Tolpeko shows us what the footer of a Parquet 1.x file looks like:

Every Parquet file has the footer that contains metadata information: schema, row groups and column statistics. The footer is located at the end of the file.

A parquet file content starts and ends with 4-byte PAR1 “magic” string. Right before the ending PAR1 there is 4-byte footer length size (little-endian encoding):

Click through for more details, as well as one downside to Parquet 1.x.

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Automating Data Comparison using Biml

Published 2021-01-28 by Kevin Feasel

Ben Weissman gives us an example of running data comparison using Biml:

When you build an ETL Solution, at some point you will most likely feel the need to compare the data between your source and your staging (or datawarehouse) database. There may be various reasons for them to be out of sync, such as delta loads, aggregations or added business logic, but one day your phone will ring and whoever is on the other end will tell you that the numbers are wrong. While this doesn’t necessarily have to be an issue within your ETL process, it might just as well be the report itself. In many cases, this is a good starting point to look at.

This article (formally published on PASS Community Blog) focusses on SSIS as your orchestrator, but the same principles could, obviously, also be applied to Azure Data Factory for example. Also, as we want to solve this task as lightweight as possible, we will, demonstrably, use Biml to implement it!

Click through to see how.

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Rule 42 Software

Published 2021-01-28 by Kevin Feasel

John Mount describes a software development anti-pattern:

As software changes, it often accretes feature and drifts away from its design, if it even started with one, and many defaults and settings become undesirable. New users are blamed for not moving parameter settings away from the defaults to the “obvious” acceptable values.

Click through for the origin of the name and more info on how to avoid it.

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Using Hints Instead of Trace Flags

Published 2021-01-28 by Kevin Feasel

Taiob Ali has a set of hints to use instead of setting trace flags:

Introduced in SQL Server 2016 (13.x) SP1 and Azure SQL Database is the USE HINT option. At the time of writing this article, there are 23 of those. You can see an up to date list by running Dynamic Management View sys.dm_exec_valid_use_hints.

With the introduction of this feature, we can replace some of the trace flags with hints. I personally like hints over trace flags (if I have to choose between two devils). That way someone reading the code have some idea what the hint is about instead of remembering the trace flag numbers.

I agree with Taiob on that sentiment.

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One Chart at a Time

Published 2021-01-28 by Kevin Feasel

Meagan Longoria has contributed to a series:

Jon Schwabish over at PolicyViz has created great initiative called the One Chart at a Time Video Series. It’s an effort to expand readers’ graphic literacy through short videos explaining how to read and use different charts. Each video is from a different person in the data visualization industry. Participants include people I admire such as Andy Kirk, Ben Jones, and Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic. Jon releases a new video each weekday. The initiative started January 11 and will continue through mid-March.

Click through for Meagan’s contribution on waterfall charts.

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