A Fine Slice Of SQL Server
Gilbert Quevauvilliers has us synchronize our watches:
In this blog post I am going to detail how to create a schedule, test and confirm that the backup for the Power BI Premium dataset is successfully backed up.
This follows on from my first blog post: Automating the backup of Power BI Premium datasets/databases – Part 1
Read on for a walkthrough of what you need to do in order to create a schedule runbook.
Comments closedReza Rad brings order to things:
The question I often get in my Power BI architecture consulting sessions is; “How should we organize our workspaces? should we have one workspace with all the reports in it? Or multiple? Should we split it based on each report? Business unit? or something else?” In this article and video, I’ll explain a guide on how to organize and set up workspaces in your organization.
Click through for a video and a helpful article.
Comments closedMy recent post on passing any value to a Power BI dynamic M parameter from a report generated quite a lot of interest but only among people who use DirectQuery mode and who want more flexibility when filtering. In this post, however, I’ll show you an application for this technique that is useful for anyone, regardless of whether they are using DirectQuery mode or Import mode, and which is nothing to do with filtering.
You’re probably familiar with Power BI’s what-if parameter feature which allows end users to pass values into calculations. It’s great but it has one big limitation: all the values that can be used need to be hard-coded in a calculated table at design time. What if (haha) you could let your users enter the values they wanted to use in the report instead? Let’s see a simple example of how to do this.
There’s a little bit of trickery but this solves a problem that I’ve had with What-If scenarios for a while: by asking the question, you naturally invite additional scenario ideas and people want to try them out right then and there.
Comments closedImke Feldmann performs a balancing act:
This article presents a method to automatically plug or balance your balance sheet in Power BI. You can use it if your bookkeeping system doesn’t contain the Profit and Loss (PnL) bookings yet. Or for planning or financial modelling purposes when your calculated balance sheet figures don’t add up.
Click through for the example, which pertains to including a current year profit/loss on the reporting breakdown.
Comments closedShabnam Watson hits on a specific but interesting use case:
The most common scenario for setting up the out of the box incremental refresh in Power BI is to base it off of a datetime column; however, there are cases when you may want to set up incremental refresh based off of a column with a data type other than datetime. Examples are when you are working with a smart date ID (01012023 for Jan 1,2023) column or when you are working with a source system that has partitioned data using a column such as Year that has a numeric data type.
A use case for the latter scenario is when you are working with Parquet/Delta files via Azure Synapse Analytics Serverless SQL Pool. When working with larger datasets, it is typical to see the Parquet/Delta files partitioned by date ranges. Depending on how much data there is, the partitioning may be at the Year level instead of Day.
With that scenario in mind, read on to learn how you can minimize your Power BI processing time and costs when doing incremental refresh.
Comments closedAllison Kennedy reveals a mystery of the universe:
I’ve just had a wonderful discovery about why Power BI sometimes seems to choose random colors in the legend.
Typically, the first item in a series will match the first color of your Power BI theme, the second item in the series will match the second color of your Power BI theme, and so on.
However, this isn’t always the case. I have noticed that sometimes when I have text category values for my legend that Power BI can assign random colors, seemingly not even part of my theme. Until recently, I just accepted this as a quirk of Power BI and carried on with my report development.
Read on for the answer.
Comments closedBusiness users often need to know how fresh the data is that they see on a Power BI report. This requirement can be interpreted to mean either “when was the last date & time that the source data was updated?” or “when was the last date & time that the data model was refreshed?”
Read on for Paul’s current solution to the problem of knowing the last time this data was refreshed.
Comments closedImke Feldmann has a clever solution to a problem:
When you reference another query in Power Query you will automatically get the results of the final step. But what if you want to reference a step that sits within that referenced query?
One solution would be to split up that query into 2 and reference the final result of the splitted query. But that could result in additional query time, as the data might be pulled from the source twice (once for each query).
Read on for a better way to do it.
Comments closedPaul Turley lays out facts (and dimensions):
There is no secret about this. If you do any legitimate research about Power BI (reading blogs, books or training from reliable sources), you will quickly learn that a lot of basic functionality requires a dimensional model, aka “Star Schema”. This is a hard fact that every expert promotes, and self-taught data analysts either have learned or will learn through experience. So, if everyone agrees on this point, why do so many resist this advice?
Perspective is everything. I didn’t understand why getting to the star schema was so out of reach so often until I was able to see it from another perspective. There are a few common scenarios that draw source data into different directions than an ideal dimensional model.
Read on for Paul’s take on the subject.
Comments closedReza Rad takes us through the workspace model in Power BI:
Workspaces are another way of sharing Power BI content with other people. The benefit of this sharing approach is that you can share content with a group of people and create a collaborative development environment where everyone can access it. In this article and video, I get you through sharing with workspaces, what the limitations and advantages are, and how it is different from dashboard sharing, and you will have a complete understanding at the end of this article which scenarios are suitable to be used with this method of sharing.
Click through for a video and an article.
Comments closed