I just finished teaching an 8 hour pre-con at SQL Saturday Indianapolis on Essential Linux for the DBA. The focus of the class was on what the Microsoft DBA would need to know as more SQL Server environments begin to run on Linux. The obstacles and demands of them will be a bit different than the Oracle crowd, as they may not have the Linux Admin or Unix expertise onsite for support and have to fend for themselves more than I did starting out on Linux. Some folks asked me why I chose to use Docker with the SQL Server…
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So I haven’t opened Visual Studio in….oh….let’s just say it’s been a few years…:) I had a project that I needed to run and was surprised when the Solution Explorer was missing from SSMS 2017. Its only fair to say, there was also fair warning from Microsoft. Due to this, I opened up Visual Studio to use its Solution Explorer and integration for SSIS and other features required for a large project. I was both happy with the sheer amount of features and have some constructive feedback to make it more user friendly. I love that I can navigate servers,…
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Power BI, like many Microsoft products, is multi-threaded. This can be seen from the logs and even the Task Manager. I know, I know…you’ve probably heard this part all before… The importance of this information, is that the logs will display Process IDs, (PID) that are separate from the main Power BI Desktop executable, including the secondary processes.. Moving from the Power BI logs that reside in the Performance folder, (see Part I here) we can view and connect the PIDs and TID, (Transaction IDs) to information from the Task Manager and the data displayed: Note that I’ve highlighted the…
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So we went over locations and the basics of logging and tracing in Power BI. I now want to know how to make more sense from the data. In Oracle, we use a utility called TKProf, (along with others and a number of third party tools) to make sense of what comes from the logs. SQL Server has Log Analytics and the profiler, but what can I do with Power BI? First, let’s discuss what happens when we have actual activity. In my first post, the system was pretty static. This time I chose to open up a file with…
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Knowing where log files are and how to turn on debugging is an essential part of any technical job and this goes for Power BI, too. Remember, as I learn, so does everyone else….Come on, pretty please? Power BI Desktop Log files and traces can be accessed one of two ways- Via the Power BI Application Via File Explorer In the Power BI application, go to File –> Options and Settings –> Options –> Diagnostics. Crash and dump files are automatically stored with an option to disable them from this screen, but unsure why you’d ever want to do this. …
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Today’s Post is brought to you by Patrick LeBlanc of Guy in a Cube. I learn best by doing, so I was working with different features while watching along on Quick Measures: As a newbie, yes, I had problems with my quick measures just as Patrick said I would, but with a twist- It wasn’t that I didn’t want to learn DAX, quite the opposite, I could get the expression to work just fine with DAX, but couldn’t seem to get the hang of the quick measure. Leave it to me to have challenges with the *simpler* method… 🙂 Its…
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Presenting data in the format to ease visualization is required for any BI product. Power BI provides much of this with Data Analysis Expressions, (DAX). As a DBA, I admit to cringing every time a reference was made how similar it is to functions in Excel or other non-database platforms. I’m a DBA and I naturally am going to see data at a much larger, more complex level. I love the simplicity of DAX, which granted me the ability to acquire basic skills using it in just a day, but considering Power BI’s ability to pull from multiple data…
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Click bait worthy title, eh? 🙂 That’s what I thought after I read the article from the Harvard Biz Review with the lead in comment, “Women who have already made it to the top say that the only person who will get you there is yourself.” I found this utterly misleading and the article missing many of the important areas, proving this incorrect. We are highly critical of women and we’re uncomfortable with women’s ambition, (which the article did lightly touch on.) The author didn’t capture how much women require sponsors and mentors or, as the article also touched on,…
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They say the devil is in the details and as I come from the DevOps side of the house, it would only be natural that I’d be attracted to how Microsoft Flow works with Power BI. For those that aren’t familiar with Microsoft Flow, think of it like If This Then That, (IFTTT) from Microsoft. I used IFTTT to automate a number of tasks at my previous company- everything from posting to social media automation, notifications on Slack, creating weekly status reports and other tedious tasks that I hated having to do manually. Microsoft Flow, is a powerful SaaS tool…
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I can be an extremely impatient person about anything I think should be faster. I’m diving in deep with Power BI and for most of the early on lessons, the data sources used are Excel and…ahem…Microsoft Access. I don’t know a DBA alive that enjoys working with Access. Its great for the common user to have a database application, but we can barely use the words “Access” and “Database” in the same sentence. In my heart, I will always be a performance person and working with Power BI desktop with Microsoft Access is enough to make you want to throw…
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I’m back!! I know you missed my posts…be honest…. 🙂 So its time to start drinking from the fire hose and its important for me to go back to the very beginning, start from scratch and learn from A to Z. I learned Power BI on my own and there is undoubtedly pieces missing from my knowledge base that need to be filled in. No way I’d be able to spell if my A to Z alphabet was missing some vital letters, right pps, err, I mean peeps? What is Power BI? Power BI is Microsoft’s answer to how people…
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So I’ve finally crawled my way back out of the hole I dug myself in this last month. The house is empty, the 5th wheel is ready for us to move into and I’m now in Redmond, doing my NEO, (New Employee Orientation.) I swear this is all I see in my head every time I hear “NEO” 🙂 D&I Epiphany The first epiphany is that Microsoft, unlike most companies, is really walking the walk when it comes to diversity. The percentage of women and people of color is by far, the largest I’ve ever seen at an on boarding…
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So many have asked me when I’m starting at Microsoft and the official date is Monday, June 11th now. Many also wonder what my upper limits are on how much I can handle, well folks, it looks like we’ve reached them! I was supposed to start this last Monday, but as my last day approached, it became all the more clear that there was a need to change my ending and start date. Individual deadlines had pushed out, requirements changed and I was left feeling a bit overwhelmed because as most know, I don’t do anything the easy way- major…
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How many updated policies for use of personal data did you sign off the last couple days? As I had observed the EU procrastinating on their compliance for General Data Protection Regulations, (GDPR) until December of 2016, (it went into effect in April, 2014 with a deadline in the EU of December, 2016) I wasn’t surprised that we’re seeing a flurry of requests to sign off on data usage this week. The deadline is tomorrow, May 25th for non-EU and as expected, here we are. I’ve been talking about GDPR for over two years now and I’m far from the…
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The next nine days, I’m traveling to three cities for four events. We’ll just call this the 9-3-4 gauntlet of speaker life. I booked this travel as four, one-way flights to get the itinerary I needed to make the most of my schedule and will have breaks between each event to make sure I don’t kill myself my last two weeks at Delphix. GLOC Today I’m heading to the Great Lakes Oracle Conference, (https://gloc.neooug.org/) where I get to present on DevOps and hang out with all my Oracle peeps. GLOC is the second largest regional Oracle user group event and…
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The only thing that stays the same is change…. As the time flies by and the world turns, I often am jarred back to reality when I discover how the little things we do can have a larger impact on the world around us. Flying back from Interop ITX and StarEast conferences last week, I was reminded of this. While reading the latest copy of Wired , I came across a story on D-Tech High School. This is the school that resides on the Oracle headquarters campus, in its own building(s). The story was interviewing different students to discuss how…
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I spent this week speaking at two conferences that may not be familiar to my usual crowd: • Techwell StarEast Testing Conference in Orlando, FL • Interop ITX Data Conference in Las Vegas, NV StarEast Testing Conference Techwell’s event is attended by testers and had over 2000 attendees at the Hyatt Regency Orlando’s Convention Center. This is a huge convention center and I won’t lie- I did try to first register at the Mazda event and then the KPMG event. One of the attendees in my session admitted she was crashing my talk from the KPMG conference and I was pretty…
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I’m getting ready to get on a plane between two events today and have been so busy, that there’s been a break in blogging. That’s right folks, Kellyn has let a few things slide…. For those people on top of all the happenings in Kevlar’s life, I’ve been busy removing 15 years of possessions from my home so we can sell it in the next month, along with the purchase, upgrade and consolidation into a 42Ft. travel trailer. It’s quite an undertaking, so a few things have had to be put lower on the priority list to complete the rest.…