Category: Power BI

Chris Webb gives us another reason to curse NULL:

Recently I’ve been asked by colleagues with various different types of performance problems why Power BI is generating SQL in a particular way, and the answer has been the presence of nullable columns in the underlying database – whether it’s SQL Server, Snowflake or Databricks. Now I’m not a DBA or any kind of database tuning expert so I can’t comment on why a SQL query performs the way it does on any given platform, but what I can do is show you two examples of how the presence of nullable columns changes the way Power BI and Power Query generate SQL.

Click through to see what happens.

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Teo Lachev gives us five reasons to switch to Power BI Gen2:

More memory
Imported models are memory-resident so memory is usually the most constraining factor. With Gen2, the capacity maximum memory applies to the resource itself and not collectively across all resources in the capacity. Let’s say you are on a P1 plan which has a maximum memory capacity of 25GB. With Gen 1, you won’t be able to have two datasets, let’s say 20GB and 10GB, loaded at the same time. However, Gen2 will apply the 25GB limit to each dataset. So, each resource (dataset, report, dataflow) will be boxed within 25 GB. This feat is possible because Gen2 uses a SaaS approach, which means datasets are scattered across multiple cluster nodes instead of being associated with a dedicated capacity. A potential downside, however, could be “noisy neighbor” because a P3 cluster node may co-host datasets from different customers.

Read on for the full list of reasons, as well as three things Teo would like to see improved in a future release.

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Adam Aspin takes us through creating Power BI themes:

Power BI has taken the world by storm when it comes to creating attention-grabbing dashboards that empower users. It has come to dominate the analytics arena with its ease of use, wide range of connectivity options, and the variety of available visuals. However, formatting (and reformatting) dashboard visuals can prove time-consuming and repetitive – as can standardizing the presentation of multiple dashboards to create a unified look and feel for a suite of reports. Most users would rather spend their time analyzing and delivering meaningful insights as opposed to applying colors and font choices to charts and tables. This article explains how Power BI themes can avoid that tedious work!

This is where the creation and application of Power BI themes comes in. A theme is a standardized definition of some – or all – of the formatting of a dashboard. This can range from defining a color palette and a selection of font choices to the detailed specification of each and every visual. Applying a theme allows you to format virtually every visual in a dashboard instantly. What is more, any changes that you subsequently make to a theme can be reapplied in a few clicks to update your dashboard’s presentation. Themes can be created once, then applied to dozens or even hundreds of Power BI dashboards to guarantee a coherent and rigorously standardized presentation style across a department or even an entire organization.

Read on to see some of the things you can do with customizing Power BI.

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Treb Gatte continues a series on Power BI Goals:

Power BI Goals enables you to present the status of a key outcome that can optionally be tied to data. Treating Power BI Goals as a glorified hierarchy of metrics may lead you to miss a more valuable use value of Goals.

Note, Goals do not roll up. The hierarchy is there to provide a context for the goal and subordinate goals. If you need data rollup, you may want to look at alternatives.

Part 4 of our blog series covers the ability to support OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) with Power BI Goals. OKRs are a very powerful mechanism for remote workers to stay in sync and focused on the most important work.

Read the whole thing.

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Teo Lachev looks at a couple of limitations in Power BI aggregations, as well as workarounds for those limitations:

Power BI aggregations are meant to speed up queries to large DirectQuery tables, as a DBA would create summarized tables to speed up queries to large tables. The most appealing aspect of telling Power BI about these aggregations is that Power BI will automatically redirect the query to the aggregation cache if it determines that its dimensionality matches the dimensionality of the aggregated table, as explained in the documentation. However, there are a couple of limitations worth emphasizing that will prevent this from happening:

Click through for those limitations and what Teo & co did to move forward despite them.

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