Brad Llewellyn shows how to build a visual based on a Python script using Power BI:
Now that we’ve seen our data, it’s a relatively simple task to convert the R script to a Python script. There are a few major differences. First, Python is a general purpose programming language, whereas R is a statistical programming language. This means that some of the functionality provided in Base R requires additional libraries in Python. Pandas is a good library for data manipulation, but is already included by default in Power BI. Scikit-learn (also known as sklearn) is a good library for build predictive models. Finally, Seaborn and Matplotlib are good libraries for creating data visualizations.
In addition, there are some scenarios where Python is a bit more verbose than R, resulting in additional coding to achieve the same result. For instance, fitting a regression line to our data using the sklearn.linear_model.LinearRegression().fit() function required much more coding than the corresponding lm() function in R. Of course, there are plenty of situations where the opposite is true and R becomes the more verbose language.
Click through for the full example.
Jason Thomas has put together a great Power BI report:
Note that there are some R/Python visuals and currently, R/Python visuals are not available on “Publish to Web”. Hence, I have just used a checkbox on the top of the report to show the images wherever R visuals are used (can be identified by the colorful border around the image). However, you can download the source file and then publish it to your tenant, and see the actual R visuals there in a browser by unselecting the checkbox. You can also look at the pbix file and see the source code behind the visuals.
Definitely check this out. Jason did a great job.
Not only does it only show the Package Search endpoint, there is a warning that says:
“Some data sources may not be listed because of hand-authored queries”
This refers to the output step in the query that calls the Package Show endpoint with the dynamically-generated url.
Closing this dialog and going back to the Query Editor, if you click the Edit Credentials button, you can set credentials for the data source (anonymous access is fine in this case). These credentials can be set at all levels in the path down to https://data.gov.uk/api/3/action/package_search.
Read the whole thing.
The logic is to create a table with the DAX function UNION. Each Table expression in UNION function represents a value of slicer. Apart from that slicer related value, all the rest of the values are blanks. It is key to have them as blanks than zero’s, we don’t see any data.
In other words, pivoting the table to turn one measure with several different category values into one measure per category. If you know the number of categories (4 in this case), this solution can work well for you.
When creating a new PowerApp using the Power BI integration, you get an additional data source – PowerBIIntegration that serves as the connection to the Power BI report. Whenever a filtering action occurs in the Power BI report, this information is available in this property.
During the PowerApps creation action I selected the action to add a new form which in the next step needs to get a connection to the Article table (which holds the additional article details).
Check out the entire series too.
I (and many others) have done a series of docker blog posts over the last couple of years but they’ve all tended to evolve around spinning up a SQL Server 2017+ container for testing or demo purposes. This is only really the start, think of the bigger picture here, once you have your database environment the world is your oyster.
This blog post will show how we can use SQL Server 2019 CTP2.1 running on Linux (Ubuntu) in a docker container as our data source for a Power BI environment in next to no time!
These steps show a very manual process for completing this setup, if it is something you are looking to do frequently then I suggest creating a Dockerfile and/or yml file and use docker-compose. This way you can have all your setup in one file and it will be a single statement to get your SQL Server 2019 environment up and running.
Read on for the demo.
This is not what we actually expect to see. The whole purpose of Sales Agg table is to speed up the process from DirectQuery mode, but we are still querying the DimDate from the database. So, what is the solution? Do we change the storage mode of DimDate to Import? If we do that, then what about the connection between DimDate and FactInternetSales? We want that connection to work as DirectQuery of course.
Now that you learned about the challenge, is a good time to talk about the third storage mode; Dual.
Read on for an example-filled tutorial.
Marco Russo explains the rules behind data type conversions in DAX:
Any DAX formula involving arithmetical operators ( + – * / ) might produce a result in a different data type. While this is obvious when you have different data types in the arguments, it could be less intuitive when the arguments have the same data type. Indeed, the result might have a different data type. This is important. Indeed, in a complex expression there could be many operators, but every operator defines a single expression that produces a new data type – that is the argument of the next operator. We will start looking at the resulting data type of the standard operators, showing a few examples later of how they could affect the result in a more complex expression.
Marco shows some relatively drastic differences: hundreds of dollars when dealing with millions (and any company okay with being off by hundreds of dollars when dealing with millions, please mail me a check for hundreds of dollars).
Melissa Coates walks us through Power BI permissions:
Based on the tests I’ve been doing, I’ve observed that users with membership to the Power BI administrator role have two sets of permissions apply:
- Activities which are scoped across the entire organization
- Activities for which normal user permissions apply
Within the above 2 categories, I’m thinking there are 4 main types of activities:
- Manage tenant settings (always scoped to the organization)
- Compile inventory and metadata (can be scoped to the organization)
- Manage workspace users (can be scoped to the organization)
- Export content from a workspace (relies on user permissions)
There’s a fair amount to digest, but Melissa does a good job explaining the implications of specific permissions.
Reza Rad dives into aggregations in Power BI. Part one introduces the topic:
Imagine a Fact table with 250 millions of rows. Such a fact table is big enough to be considered as a good candidate for DirectQuery connection. You don’t want to load such a big table into the memory, and most probably, the Power BI file size exceeds the 1GB limitation. Now, think about your reporting solution for a second. Do you always query this fact table at the finest or minimum granular level? I mean do you always look at every single transaction in this table when you do report on it?
The answer is No. In most of the times, you are querying the data by other fields or columns. As an example; you query the Sales value in the fact table, by Year. Some other times, you query the fact table’s values by Customer’s education category. Some other times, you query the values in the fact table, by each product. When you look at real-world scenarios, most of the time, you are querying the fact table by aggregations of dimension tables.
Then, Reza starts building an aggregation table:
Aggregation tables are the fast performing solution for huge DirectQuery tables in Power BI. In the previous blog post, I explained what is an aggregation, and why it is an important part of a Power BI implementation. Aggregations are part of the Composite model in the Power BI. For the aggregation set up, your first step is to create an aggregated table. In this blog post, I’ll explain how that step can be done. If you want to learn more about Power BI, read the Power BI book, from Rookie to Rock Star.
There’s a lot of detail packed into the first posts in this series, so it looks like a good one to watch.
Kevin Feasel
2018-12-18
Data Science, Power BI, Python