• Azure - Microsoft - Power BI - Power BI Desktop

    Securing Data in Power BI- an Interactive Diagram

    December 5, 2019 - By 

    I haven’t been very good at sharing my analytics work as often I feel others are more skilled in this area than I am, just starting out, but today I’d like to start to fix that by sharing an interactive diagram.  I know, some of you may be saying, “infographic”, but as it’s has links vs. a paginated design, I’ll call it as I see it. Not the Kitchen Sink This diagram I built for a customer who was interested in how data was secured at different stages of the Power BI environment and was built with their specific Power…

  • Microsoft - Power BI

    My PASS Summit, Wednesday, Nov. 6th Recommendations from DBAKevlar!

    November 5, 2019 - By 

    I thought I would share the recommendations for the next day that I’m excited about this year at PASS Summit 2019!  There are some really great sessions and as most attendees, I’ve focused the list on topics that I’m interested in or can help me in my role. Although Tuesday afternoon and evening may kill me with how many events are all planned, there’s still a lot going on for the rest of the week! Wednesday starts with my session with Denise McInerney, on Becoming a Technical Leader, so I don’t get to attend first, but will be presenting.  This…

  • Oracle - Power BI

    Power BI Reporting with Oracle Essbase

    July 2, 2019 - By 

    This last week, I presented a few sessions at ODTUG’s KSCOPE 2019 conference in Seattle.  One of these sessions was with my wonderful co-presenter and Oracle Application Cloud expert, Opal Alapat.  I connected with her when the call for papers opened and asked her if there would be interest in doing a session with Power BI connect to the Essbase in the Oracle Applications cloud, (OAC).  There was no desire to do a bake-off or competitive session, just a morbid curiosity about what options there were to connect the two and the outcome of building reports out of valuable data…

  • Microsoft - Power BI

    One Year at Microsoft

    June 13, 2019 - By 

    Hard to believe its been one year, but it was June, 2018 when I joined the unstoppable company known as Microsoft. All-in Analytics I joined, with the expectation that I would leave much of what I had specialized in behind me- Oracle, along with other non-Microsoft database platforms, Linux, optimization and DevOps. I was excited to start my journey in business intelligence. Power BI was already starting to take over the world. I’d noticed the patterns, having only arrived on the BI scene in 2015, it was encompassing a larger percentage of speaker sessions and focus of content on the…

  • DBA Life - GDPR - Linux - Microsoft - Power BI - Thought Leadership

    The Late Spring Speaking Gauntlet

    April 17, 2019 - By 

    There are busy times for everyone and if you speak at conferences, the busy times are March,May and November. I am recovering from the early spring rush, and now it’s time to prepare for the late spring one. I’ve been fortunate enough to be accepted to speak at the following regional SQL Saturdays and look forward to speaking and meeting new folks, along with catching up with conference friends: SQL Saturday Raleigh, April 27th Optimizing Power BI, Taming of the Shrew, (Analytics) SQL Saturday Jacksonville, May 5th GDPR, The Buck Stops Here, (data governance) Be a Part of the Solution…

  • Microsoft - Oracle - Power BI

    Upcoming Events- #SQLSatCle and @RMOUG_ORG #TD19

    January 30, 2019 - By 

    As I live in an RV and travel as part of my work and to attend events, travel has started to figure out that I often fly out of one location and fly back into another. This week will be no different. Since we travel between cities on the weekend, its bound to happen that I leave for a SQL Saturday on a Friday in one city and arrive back in a different city on a Sunday. This Friday I will fly out of New Orleans, LA airport, only to fly in on Sunday to a small airport outside of…

  • Microsoft - Power BI - Power BI Desktop - SQLServer

    Speeding up Power BI Interface for sp_Blitz/First Responder Kit

    January 8, 2019 - By 

    So Tracy Boggiano told me about the great First Responder kit that Brent Ozar had available to use with sp_Blitz using Power BI desktop for a UI, but that it was really slow to non-responsive as data grew. As this was focused on performance data and also included my new love of Power BI, I asked to take a look at it. Tracy was kind enough to send me a copy of her database and the support files for the responder kit and I finally had time to look into it this week. We won’t discuss how I managed to…

  • Microsoft - Power BI

    Clean Data = Happy Analytics

    December 13, 2018 - By 

    I just finished cleaning up the example data that I was offered for my own demos and solutions. Working in Education requires you use education data to ensure what you’re presenting resonates with the users you’re working with. Otherwise you just look silly presenting something that makes utterly no sense to the individual you’re hoping to impress. Having been given the gift a large data set from demos and solutions, I quickly took the data in its original form and attempted to use it, “as is” in Power BI. After a less than stellar demonstration, set off by bizarre results…

  • Database - Microsoft - Power BI - SQLServer

    Pass Summit 2018 Keynote 11/7

    November 7, 2018 - By 

    So I made it to PASS Summit 2018.  After a flight from an airport with one gate-  yes, you heard me right, one gate.  No Wi-Fi, no connectivity and four employees at the airport.  It was a new level of disconnect. After a number of parties last night, I’m at the bloggers table for the first keynote this morning.  The first keynote started with an energized talk from PASS president and friend, Grant Fritchey.  It was a gracious discussion about the dedication of those in the community and power of those involved. Keynote #1 The theme is #V20, the newest…

  • Power BI - Power BI Desktop

    Power BI- Loading PBI Log Files

    August 24, 2018 - By 

    There’s a reason that log analytics programs, like Splunk, Data Dog and Sumo Logic are so popular.  Even Microsoft has a Log Analytics product, but the important message here is log data is massive and parsing through it to find important information can be a bit of a pain.  The second word in Log Analytics IS “analytics”.  Due to this, the first thought when faced with the number of logs from many complex Power BI environments that people are building, (multiple data sources, multiple data centers, SSRS, Power BI, etc) was to load the logs into Power BI. I’ve been…

  • performance - Power BI - Power BI Desktop

    Power BI 101- Logging and Tracing, Part III

    July 26, 2018 - By 

    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…

  • performance - Power BI - Power BI Desktop

    Power BI 101- Logging and Tracing, Part II

    July 23, 2018 - By 

    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…

  • performance - Power BI - Power BI Desktop

    Power BI 101 – Log Files and Tracing

    July 18, 2018 - By 

    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. …

  • Power BI - Power BI Desktop

    Month Over Month and Newer Schtuff- Power BI

    July 12, 2018 - By 

    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…

  • DAX - Power BI - Power BI Desktop

    Data Modeling, Dates and DAX

    July 5, 2018 - By 

    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…

  • Azure - devops - Microsoft Flow - Power BI

    Automation and Analytics

    July 2, 2018 - By 

    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…

  • AI - Microsoft - Power BI

    The Journey Begins- Power BI and AI

    June 12, 2018 - By 

    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…

  • AI - Microsoft - Oracle - Power BI - SQLServer

    Time is Gold

    June 6, 2018 - By 

    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…