A Fine Slice Of SQL Server
Probably one of the most annoying things about creating bookmarks is… updating them!
However, there is a trick that will make your life so much easier and the process a lot faster.
And the trick is…
GROUP YOUR VISUALS and always select the option “SELECTED VISUALS” when creating your bookmark
Read on to see how it works.
Comments closedReza Rad shares some thoughts with us:
DAX is the language of writing calculations in Power BI. We use DAX to write calculations such as year-over-year change and percentage, or percentage of the total or rank of customers by their yearly revenue. Writing calculations in DAX takes time, and you may likely need to re-use a calculation in multiple reports.
Creating copies of the PBIX file every time for reusing the calculation is not ideal. The better approach is to have a shared dataset created by DAX calculations and then create thin reports with live connections to the shared Power BI dataset. Using a shared dataset ensures that all the reports are using the same DAX calculations. If a change is needed, it is only needed in the shared dataset. Maintaining a solution like this would be much easier.
Click through for a dozen or so recommendations.
Comments closedMarco Russo and Alberto Ferrari ask who you believe, them or your lying eyes:
When looking at a report, it is natural to double-check the numbers produced. The simplest and most intuitive way is to verify whether the total equals the sum of individual rows. This behavior is extremely natural and mostly effective. Nonetheless, the total is the sum of rows only for additive measures, which are measures that are naturally computed as a sum.
When working with business intelligence solutions, sooner or later a developer will author a calculation that is non-additive. At that point, the total can no longer be computed by summing the rows for a very good reason: it would be inaccurate. When users complain about the fact that the rows do not sum up, seasoned BI developers offer a rational explanation of the reasons why the number are not summed: this process often provides a better understanding of how values are computed. Choosing the easy way out of introducing additivity in a naturally non-additive calculation means losing the opportunity to generate accurate calculations, and relying on inaccurate values.
Read on for examples and how to understand how to deal with non-additive or semi-additive features.
Comments closedChris Webb wants to sort out some performance issues on calculation groups:
A few weeks ago I wrote a post showing how you can use the new EvaluateAndLog DAX function to diagnose performance problems relating to the use of the Switch function. Did you know that calculation groups can experience similar performance problems though? In some scenarios limited evaluation takes place for all calculation items, not just the one you expect; luckily you can use EvaluateAndLog to diagnose this too. In this post I’ll show you a simple example.
Read on for the example.
Comments closedPrathy Kamasani gives us options:
A colleague of mine came to me with an interesting use case, “ Switch between a summarized value or selected value with multiple legends”. For example, I have five countries and their GDP values. When the end user goes to the report, the user would like to see the average GDP of all countries, but when the user selects single or multiple countries on the slicers, the line chart should show only selected values.
Click through for the guide.
Comments closedPaul Turley sends us an e-mail:
Using common language is critical but often trivialized, when describing requirements, deliverables and project expectations. When people are working together, depending on each other to complete important tasks, they must have a clear understanding of the common language and terminology. It is usually only after a word, phrase or abbreviation has been used with an assumed meaning that we realize the error and have gotten ourselves into trouble. Often, on a daily basis, I review project proposals and requirement documents containing inaccurate language related to Power BI project work. I also getting a lot of virtual eye-rolling when correcting seemingly inconsequential language. But I can also cite many cases when subtle misinterpretations became costly mistakes.
This is at a higher level than naming measures or dimensions.
Comments closedGilbert Quevauvilliers reads the chain of custody documents:
As often happens blog posts originate from a customer requesting something I have not figured out before.
In this example the requirement was to be able to determine which data sources were being used by which tables, which were then associated to one or many Power BI datsets.
While I was working through this I figured out I could take it one step further and also if required have the actual Power Query as part of the report.
Read on to see what Gilbert came up with.
Comments closedTeo Lachev goes error-hunting:
A scheduled SSIS job that executes a massive DAX query to an on-prem Tabular server (Power BI can also generate this error) one day decided to throw an error “Source: “Microsoft OLE DB Provider for Analysis Services.” Hresult: 0x80004005 Description: “MdxScript(Model) (2020, 98) Calculation error in measure ‘Account Snapshot'[Average utilisation % of all CR active current accounts last 3 months]: The result of a conversion or arithmetic operation is either too large or too small.” At least we know the offending measure, but which row is causing the error? The query requests some 300+ measures for 120 million customers, so I thought someone might find the troubleshooting technique useful. Let’s ignore what the measure does for now except mentioning that it performs a division of two other measures.
Click through for the technique.
Comments closedRobert Blackburn builds a dashboard:
We must periodically evaluate the state of our databases. Luckily for SQL Server, Microsoft provides us with a customizable assessment through their SQL Assessment API Repo and API Documentation. You can change the rules per database and output the results to a database to track history.
However, that will take more than an hour. Let’s create a dashboard with the default rules in under an hour. We will use Azure Data Studio (ADS) and Power BI Desktop (PBI). If you are not familiar with them, both are free. Azure Data Studio is automatically installed with SSMS 18.7 and higher. You can also install them individually.
Read on to see how this works. Granted, it will not auto-update but unless the assessment output format changes between runs, at least you wouldn’t need to modify Power BI and could just refresh the data.
Comments closedMarc Lelijveld investigates a what-if scenario:
One of the topics discussed during the session, is the effect of deployments on datasets by using native deployment pipelines in the Power BI service. Deployment Pipelines only deploy meta data from the data model, however specific changes might have an unwanted effect on the data in the dataset in the target stage.
In this blog post, I will further elaborate on several specific use cases and the effect on your dataset in the target stage.
Read on for the results of three separate tests.
Comments closed