A Fine Slice Of SQL Server
Meagan Longoria wants to know about visual interactions:
It can be tedious to check what visual interactions have been configured in a Power BI report. If you have a lot of bookmarks, this becomes even more important. If you do this manually, you have to turn on Edit Interactions and select each visual to see what interactions it is emitting to the other visuals on the page.
But there is a better way!
Click through for that better way.
Leave a CommentJon Vöge declares a hostile takeover:
Now, how you best maintain multiple copies/variants of the same Semantic Model is a whole other discussion but as a one-off, I was asked to merge the Measures of the two models.
Initially, the question actually stumped me as my usual tool of choice for external manipulation of semantic models Tabular Editor does not have a great native way to solve this.
Jon lists a variety of options and then gets the job done with ALM Toolkit.
Leave a CommentKenneth Omorodion needs a calendar dimension:
Before September 2025, there was a complex workaround to create time intelligence calculations in DAX catered to different calendar types apart from the standard Gregorian calendar. With the Power BI September 2025 feature updates (still in preview at the time of writing), it is now readily possible to define custom Power BI custom calendars based time intelligence, like Shifted Gregorian, ISO, and retail calendars, in the data model and then use the new extended DAX functions against these calendars.
The new feature eliminates the need for complex workarounds and ensures cleaner and more accurate reporting for organizations. This tip will explain the different calendars used in time intelligence reporting and how to define them based on the new calendar-based time intelligence capability in Power BI.
Read on for several examples of how this works.
Leave a CommentMarco Russo and Alberto Ferrari talk about values:
We discussed VALUES in previous articles: Choosing between DISTINCT and VALUES in DAX and Using VALUES in iterators. However, there is a third case where VALUES could be used with a table reference, which is when you use SUMMARIZE to group by columns you want to iterate. In this article, we describe this particular scenario to understand when VALUES is needed to retrieve the blank for an invalid relationship using SUMMARIZE and SUMMARIZECOLUMNS.
When you use SUMMARIZE, you may want to use VALUES over the aggregated table in case it could have an additional blank row for an invalid relationship, and you must ensure that this blank row is included. This condition is uncommon because SUMMARIZE often includes blank rows for invalid relationships that are implicitly included. For example, consider the following measure that uses SUMMARIZE over the Sales table, grouping by Customer[State] and Customer[City] to apply an adjustment to Columbus, Ohio (note that there are other cities with that name in other states):
Curated SQL tip number 17: if you want to show up here, use the best city in Ohio as a (positive) example.
Leave a CommentGilbert Quevauvilliers grabs a query:
Load testing is essential when working with Microsoft Fabric capacity. With limited resources, deploying a Power BI report without testing can lead to performance issues, downtime, and frustrated users. In this series, I’ll show you how to automate load testing using Fabric Notebooks, making the process faster, easier, and repeatable.
Inspired by Phil Seamark’s approach, this method eliminates manual complexity and allows you to capture real user queries for accurate testing.
Read on for the first part, in which Gilbert uses the Performance Analyzer to capture query details.
Leave a CommentElena Drakulevska builds a switch:
We learned in the last post that while dark UI feels sleek, it’s not automatically accessible and it shouldn’t be your default strategy (hello, contrast + glare). In most cases, light mode is the more accessible baseline (just imagine trying to work on a sunny beach or on your balcony with dark mode… nightmare).
But UX is also about choice. Some users love light, some swear by dark. So let’s give them control.
Read on to see how, without sacrificing much accessibility.
Leave a CommentFor this weeks blog, a quick tip about a feature in Power BI desktop which had flow entirely over my head: You can use RegEx for Find & Replace operations in Power BI Desktop TMDL View!
Yes! You heard that right!
I had no idea, until I caught it in a live demo by Power BI partner director Mohammad Ali at his Power BI Next Step keynote.
Read on to see what you can do with this. The same is possible in other tools like Visual Studio Code and even SQL Server Management Studio, though what specific regular expression capabilities are available and the exact syntax for them will differ based on the product.
Leave a CommentMarc Lelijveld writes a script:
You may be using standardized solutions like Fabric Unified Admin Monitoring (FUAM) or any other templated solution that comes with a semantic model. As part of transparency within your organization, you decided to share the insights gathered with others in the organization by adjusting the solution to apply your own security setup on top.
However, after running an update of the template, you’ve overwritten your custom security configuration and reapplying costs a lot of time, again and again after each update. Why don’t we just script this security? In this blog I will share how you can deploy security configurations to semantic models and assign users to these roles.
Click through for an example script and details on how it works.
Leave a CommentBoniface Muchendu handles a many-to-many relationship:
Many-to-many relationships in Power BI are one of the most frequent challenges faced by new and intermediate users. These relationships can cause incorrect totals in visuals, confusing results, and slower report performance. In this guide, we’ll explore what many-to-many relationships in Power BI are, why they’re problematic, and how to fix them using the most effective methods available.
Click through for an enumeration of the problem as well as a couple of ways to resolve it.
Comments closedSheil Bakhshi performs a comparison:
The long-running debate around how Power BI calculates totals in tables and matrices has been part of the community conversation for years. Greg Deckler has kept the topic alive through his ongoing “broken totals” posts on social media, often suggesting that Power BI should include a simple toggle to make totals behave more like Excel. His continued campaign prompted a detailed reply from Daniel Otykier in his article “No More Measure Totals Shenanigans“, and earlier, Diego Scalioni explored how DAX evaluates totals internally in his post “Cache me if you can: DAX Totals behind the scenes“.
This blog brings all those perspectives together from a scientific and comparative angle. It looks at how totals are calculated in Power BI and compares that behaviour with Tableau, Excel, Paginated Reports, and even T-SQL. The goal is not to take sides, but to clear up the confusion around what is happening under the hood.
This is a very detailed and dispassionate explanation that helps make sense of the debate.
Comments closed