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Curated SQL Posts

DAX Patterns: Second Edition

Published 2020-08-11 by Kevin Feasel

Marco Russo announces a second edition of DAX Patterns:

Great news! Just one year after releasing the second edition of The Definitive Guide to DAX, we just published a new website, a new book, and a new collection of videos: the second edition of DAX Patterns!

DAX Patterns is a collection of patterns in DAX for Power BI, Analysis Services Tabular, and Power Pivot for Excel. The first edition of DAX Patterns dates back to the end of 2014, and it was based on Power Pivot for Excel. Since then, DAX has evolved with many useful features. Most importantly, Power BI hit the market, and the number of users adopting DAX grew at an exponential rate. When we published the first edition of this book, Power BI had not even been announced yet. Today, most DAX users create a Power BI solution. The new edition of DAX Patterns is thus based on the tool you love: Power BI.

The book looks to be quite useful, and you can get an idea if this content is right for you from the DAX Patterns website. What’s crazy is that they’re offering everything in the book on the website for free, but I’d suggest that if you pick up enough good info from the site, give back by buying a copy of the book or videos.

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Stopping and Starting Virtual Machines in a Resource Group

Published 2020-08-11 by Kevin Feasel

Dennes Torres walks us through a script to stop or start all virtual machines in an Azure resource group:

Some tasks on azure are easier if we automate them. The Azure Portal provides us the cloud shell, which we can use for this kind of automation.

I was making some experiences with SQL Server Always On, so I created three VMs inside a resouce group. Every time I want to start some experiment I need to start all three VMs and, in the end, stop all three again.

Read on to see how Dennes is able to accomplish this.

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SQL Serverless in Azure Synapse Analytics

Published 2020-08-11 by Kevin Feasel

James Serra talks to us about SQL serverless (presently known as SQL on-demand but I’m getting ahead of the marketing curve this time):

Querying data in ADLS Gen2 storage using T-SQL is made easy because of the OPENROWSET function with additional capabilities (check out the T-SQL that is supported). The currently supported file types in ADLS Gen2 that SQL-on-demand can use are Parquet, CSV, and JSON. ParquetDirect and CSV 2.0 add performance improvements (see Benchmarking Azure Synapse Analytics – SQL Serverless, using .NET Interactive). You can also query folders and multiple files and use file metadata in queries.

Read on to learn a lot more about its use cases.

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Fixing Bad Data in Power BI

Published 2020-08-11 by Kevin Feasel

Matt Allington does the thing you shouldn’t (often) do:

Let me make this statement upfront and be clear. The best way to solve problems with source data are to go back to the source and correct the problems there. This is my recommendation on how you should solve such issues. However, sometimes that is not possible for whatever reason. This article will explain how you can use Power Query to override incorrect data during load when you can’t change it at the source, for whatever reason.

This is the classic BI tool quandry: the best solution is, as Matt mentions, to fix the source system. But when that’s not on the table—such as when you’re getting data from a third party—Matt has methods to work through data issues.

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Release Rollback with Helm

Published 2020-08-11 by Kevin Feasel

Andrew Pruski shows the secret of how Helm lets you roll back releases even when deployments are deleted:

If we rollback with kubectl rollout undo the pods in the newest replicaset are deleted, and pods in an older replicaset are spun back up, rolling back the upgrade.

But there’s a potential problem here. What happens if that old replicaset is deleted?

If that happens, we wouldn’t be able to rollback the upgrade. Well we wouldn’t be able to roll it back with kubectl rollout undo, but what happens if we’re using Helm?

Read on to learn how the whole thing works.

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What’s New in Kafka 2.6?

Published 2020-08-10 by Kevin Feasel

Randall Hauch takes us through the changes in Apache Kafka 2.6:

We’ve made quite a few significant performance improvements in this release, particularly when the broker has larger partition counts. Broker shutdown performance is significantly improved, and performance is dramatically improved when producers use compression. Various aspects of ACL usage are faster and require less memory. And we’ve reduced memory allocations in several other places within the broker.

This release also adds support for Java 14. And over the past few releases, the community has switched to using Scala 2.13 by default and now recommends using Scala 2.13 for production.

Finally, these accomplishments are only one part of a larger active roadmap in the run up to Apache Kafka 3.0, which may be one of the most significant releases in the project’s history. 

Read on to learn more.

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EXTPTR_PTR Error with Rcpp

Published 2020-08-10 by Kevin Feasel

Rick Pack walks us through an error in R:

I experienced a need to update Rcpp when I attempted to install the readxlsb R package, which promised to enable me to read .xlsb files in R.

What happened next has been forgotten: Did the attempted update of Rcpp appear to succeed or fail? I did record that my attempted installation of readxlsb still failed and I now experienced an unfamiliar error when I opened and closed R Studio:

“The procedure entry point EXTPTR_PTR could not be located in the dynamic link library”

Read on to see how Rick solved this problem.

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Creating Nonsense Documents with Powershell

Published 2020-08-10 by Kevin Feasel

Jeffrey Hicks has a nonsense generator:

Today I thought I’d share my PowerShell solution to a recent Iron Scripter challenge. The challenge was to create PowerShell code that would create nonsense documents, with a goal of creating 10 sample files filled with gibberish. Yes, other than maybe wanting some test files to work with, on its face the challenge appears pointless.  However, as with all of these challenges, or even the ones in The PowerShell Practice Primer, the journey is the reward. The true value is learning how to use PowerShell, and maybe discovering a new technique or command. The hope is that during the course of working on the challenge, you’ll improve your PowerShell scripting skills. And who knows, maybe even have a little fun along the way.

It’s not quite up to the level of quality that you find in post-modern academic papers, but it’s getting there.

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The Dunder Mifflin Data Set

Published 2020-08-10 by Kevin Feasel

Tim Mitchell has a new data set for us:

I’ve been a fan of Dunder Mifflin ever since I first learned about this small midwestern paper company. Over the years I’ve gotten to know their people and processes, following from a distance their successes, failures, and various adventures. Who would have known the paper business would be so interesting?

Based on what I learned about this company, I built this Dunder Mifflin data set based on the old Northwind structure, adapting it to meet the needs of this small paper company. It includes most of the employees, regional locations (both current and now-closed), and has a modestly-sized set of sales data for demos and testing.

Check out Tim’s GitHub repo and give it a try.

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Power BI Desktop: Analyze in Excel

Published 2020-08-10 by Kevin Feasel

Marco Russo has gone and done it now:

Less than a month ago, Microsoft introduced the External Tools feature in the Power BI Desktop July 2020 release. By using DAX Studio, you were already able to create a PivotTable in Excel connected to the model hosted by Power BI Desktop. However, this would require three clicks (DAX Studio / Advanced / Excel). This is why I thought the External Tools feature was something many users would like to use without having to open – or even install – a larger tool like DAX Studio is.

It’s interesting to see what the community has made so far from the External Tools feature.

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