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Category: Power BI

Date Calculation Bug in Power Query ODBC Code

Published 2024-04-03 by Kevin Feasel

Meagan Longoria files a report:

I was working on an imported Power BI semantic model, adding some fiscal year calculations to my date table. The date table was sourced from a view in Databricks Unity Catalog. I didn’t have access to add more fields to the view, so I was adding the fields in Power Query first, with plans to request they be added to the view in the future. I got some unexpected results, which turned into a bug being logged for the ODBC code for Power Query.

If you are only analyzing data in the last 20 years, you won’t see this bug. But if you are doing long-term analysis including years before 2000, you might just run into it.

Read on to see the bug, how you can replicate it, and three workarounds you can use to avoid it.

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Power BI Paginated Reports over Excel and Web Services

Published 2024-04-01 by Kevin Feasel

Chris Webb shares an announcement:

By far the most exciting announcement for me this week was the new release of Power BI Report Builder that has Power Query built in, allowing you to connect to far more data sources in paginated reports than you ever could before. There’s a very detailed blog post and video showing you how this new functionality works here:

Given that this seems to be the spiritual replacement for SSRS, it’s good to see them still working on it.

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EXPAND and COLLAPSE in Power BI Visual Calculations

Published 2024-03-27 by Kevin Feasel

Marco Russo and Alberto Ferrari build on a foundation:

In a previous article, we introduced VISUAL SHAPE, the table modifier that adds a hierarchical structure to a table, which is needed to implement visual calculations. In this article, we introduce the concept of visual context, the virtual table lattice, and the two main operators to navigate in the visual context: EXPAND and COLLAPSE.

Click through to learn more about these operators and how they fit into the rubric of visual calculations.

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Migrating from Power BI to Microsoft Fabric

Published 2024-03-20 by Kevin Feasel

Paul Turley gives us an overview:

Fabric is here but what does that mean if you are using Power BI? What do you need to know and what, if anything, will you need to change if you are a Power BI report designer, developer or BI solution architect? What parts of Fabric should you use now and how do you plan for the near-term future? As I write this in March of 2024, I’m at the Microsoft MVP Summit at the Microsoft campus in Redmond, Washington this week learning about what the product teams will be working on over the next year or so. Fabric is center stage in every conversation and session. To say that Fabric has moved my cheese would be a gross understatement. I’ve been working with data and reporting solutions for about 30 years and have seen many products come and go. Everything I knew about working with databases, data warehouses, transforming and reporting on data has changed recently BUT it doesn’t mean that everyone using Power BI must stop what they are doing and adapt to these changes. The core product is unchanged. Power BI still works as it always has.

Read on to learn more about Paul’s thesis and how the world changes with Microsoft Fabric.

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Creating Dynamic Moving Averages with Visual Calcs and Numeric Parameters

Published 2024-03-19 by Kevin Feasel

Erik Svensen builds a dynamic moving average:

With the introduction of visual calculation in the February 2024 release of Power BI desktop (https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/visual-calculations-preview/) – this gives us some new possibilities to add calculations on the individual visual and some new functions gives us some exiciting options.

One example could be to use the MOVINGAVERAGE function (link) to and combine it with numeric range parameter to make it dynamic.

Click through for a video and a description of how to do it.

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Copying a Direct Lake Semantic Model between Fabric Workspaces

Published 2024-03-18 by Kevin Feasel

Kevin Chant makes a copy:

In this post I introduce scripts to improve copying a Direct Lake semantic model to another workspace using Microsoft Fabric Git integration.

I wanted to do this follow-up after my previous post about my initial tests to copy a Direct Lake semantic model to another workspace using Microsoft Fabric Git integration.

Due to the fact that I want to show how you can work with scripts locally to create the repository that contains the Direct Lake semantic model. Plus, how to do this in a way that includes the new Tabular Model Definition Language (TMDL) semantic file format.

Read on to see how it all fits together.

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Overloading Power BI in Microsoft Fabric

Published 2024-03-14 by Kevin Feasel

Reitse Eskens pushes the envelope:

In my previous blog on Fabric and loadtesting, I ended with not really knowing how PowerBI would respond to all these rows. After creating and presenting a session on this subject, it’s time to dig into this part of Fabric as well. There were questions and I made promises. So here goes! This blog will only show the F2 experience as that’s where things went off the road. And, as I’ve shown in the previous blog, the CU count doesn’t change between SKU’s, only the amount of SKU’s available changes.
This blog isn’t meant to scold Fabric or make it look silly, I’m the one who’s silly. The goal is to show some limitations, a way you can do some load testing and help you find your way in the available metrics.

Read on to see what Reitse has gotten into.

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Incremental Refresh on Large Power BI Semantic Models

Published 2024-03-12 by Kevin Feasel

Soheil Bakhshi needs to refresh a lot of data:

Implementing incremental refresh on Power BI is usually straightforward if we carefully follow the implementation steps. However in some real-world scenarios, following the implementation steps is not enough. In different parts of my latest book, Expert Data Modeling with Power BI, 2’nd Edition, I emphasis the fact that understanding business requirements is the key to every single development project and data modelling is no different. Let me explain it more in the context of incremental data refresh implementation.

Read on for that explanation, as well as a few tips to make things work a bit more smoothly.

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VISUAL SHAPE and Visual Calculations

Published 2024-03-12 by Kevin Feasel

Marco Russo and Alberto Ferrari fit the square pegs into the square holes:

Visual calculations, introduced as a preview feature with the February 2024 release of Power BI, aim to simplify the creation of calculations tied to a specific visual. Using visual calculations for simple calculations is straightforward.

However, as soon as developers create more complex calculations, they should understand the technical details of visual calculation implementation. This requires understanding the hierarchical structure of the virtual table, the new visual context, the semantics of ROWS and COLUMNS, the behavior of CALCULATE, and the new visual context modifiers EXPAND and COLLAPSE.

In this first article about visual calculations, we introduce VISUAL SHAPE and the basics of visual calculation implementation, leaving the remaining topics to future articles. A complete whitepaper with a detailed explanation of all these topics will be available soon to SQLBI+ subscribers.

Even without a complete whitepaper, this serves as a useful primer on the topic.

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Relationship Columns and Power BI DirectQuery Mode

Published 2024-03-11 by Kevin Feasel

Chris Webb builds a relationship:

Many Power BI connectors for relational databases, such as the SQL Server connector, have an advanced option to control whether relationship columns are returned or not. By default this option is on. Returning these relationship columns adds a small overhead to the time taken to open a connection to a data source and so, for Power BI DirectQuery semantic models, turning this option off can improve report performance slightly.

Read on to learn what these relationship columns are and how you can remove them. Chris also provides a first-order approach to how you can estimate the performance pain involved with including these.

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