Power-Bi

In a recent consulting project, I needed to plot analytic values over postcodes. I couldn’t just do it with the built-in maps control, mostly because the system that we’re developing on doesn’t have Internet connectivity. I was keen to upload the mapping data directly into the report, and the Shape Map control (while still in preview) seemed to fit what I needed exactly.

However, when you load custom maps into the control, they need to be in TopoJSON format. Now TopoJSON is a specific extension over GeoJSON which has been pretty common for a while. I tried just using a GeoJSON file with the control, to no luck.

2019-11-05

Over the last few months, one of my Kiwi buddies (and fellow member of both the MVP and Microsoft Regional Director programs) Reza Rad has been organizing a bunch of us to write a book that’s a collection of ideas from a number of MVPs. It’s the Power BI MVP Book.

There are a whole lot of authors from a whole lot of different countries: Reza Rad, Anil Maharjan, Indira Bandari, Liam Bastick, Ken Puls, Jesus Gil, Thomas LeBlanc, Ike Ellis, Matt Allington, Leila Etaati, Markus Ehrenmüller, Ashraf Ghonaim, Eduardo Castro, Manohar Punna, Treb Gatte, Gilbert Quevauvilliers, Michael Johnson, Shree Khanal, Asgeir Gunnarsson, Greg Low, Gogula Aryalingam.

2019-08-16

Three years back, with much fanfare at a partner conference, Microsoft announced the Microsoft Professional Degree program. It was going to be a set of courses that you could take that would lead to one of their professional degrees.

Now here in Australia, you can’t just call something a degree, and I’m guessing that’s the same in the USA, so I wasn’t surprised when I noticed soon after I started with it, that the name had changed to the Microsoft Professional Program (MPP), and they’d dropped the “degree” word.

2019-07-23

I spend a lot of time doing consulting that involves Power BI. One of the core skills for working with Power BI is getting yourself comfortable with the M language that’s used in Power Query.

I was asked the other day, how to create a function that determines if a date is a weekday or a weekend. That’s actually quite easy. The Date.DayOfWeek function can be adapted to do that.

2019-06-28

One of my Kiwi buddies who specializes in Power BI is Reza Rad. I was pleased to see he had a set of eBooks now on Power BI but was especially happy to see he had a book called Pro Power BI Architecture.

There are lots of books around to discuss how to use Power BI but there’s been a real lack of books on architecting solutions using Power BI. So if you want to learn to develop dashboards or reports, this isn’t the book for you. Reza has other books for that.

2019-05-10

In our free SDU Tools for Developers and DBAs was an AddWeekdays function. Now that was for T-SQL. Recently though, I needed to do that for Power Query. While the M language has a wonderful set of date-related functions, it didn’t have this one.

That made it time to write one. Here’s the code that’s required:

So how does it work?

Forgive the formatting to fit this window, but let’s take a quick look through it:

2019-04-09

A current trend that I can’t say that I love is constant churn within software applications. I have no interest to go back to the days where we got a new version of SQL Server or Power BI, etc. every few years.

It’s also not a case of who moved my cheese?

In fact, I thrive on change. However, I’ve now become really concerned about how anyone:

• Learns to use a complex application
• Remembers how to use a complex application when they don’t use it daily

I first really struck this issue with Azure. If I was teaching a class that used Azure, I could check every single lab on Sunday night, then Monday morning, the students would find it had all changed. That’s OK for an experienced person, but not OK for a learner.

2018-02-20

Digital Transformation and Cloud Transformation are phrases that I hear bandied around at nearly every large organization that I currently doing consulting work for.

Yet, in so many cases, I can’t see the organization achieving the changes required. This is for two core reasons:

• The first is that the culture within the organizations is a major hurdle. There just isn’t enough flexibility to think outside the box about alternative ways to work.
• Worse (and probably more concerning), I see these companies taking advice on how to make these transformations from companies who don’t themselves “get it”.

An organization that is cloud-antagonistic internally, and stuck in an endless IT management quagmire, isn’t likely to make a good cloud transformation, and they’re certainly not going to be a successful partner to be able to help you to make a successful cloud migration or to implement a cloud transformation within your company.

2018-02-06

I had the great pleasure to record another SQL Down Under podcast last week with the Power BI general manager Kamal Hathi.

In the show, Kamal and I discuss the current state and potential futures for Power BI, its relationship to SQL Server Reporting Services, and its development and extensibility models.

You’ll find the show here: https://podcast.sqldownunder.com

I hope you enjoy it.

Note: We had a few unexpected audio issues with the recording. Sorry about that. We’ll do better next time :-) It’s still pretty good and I’ll still think you’ll find it interesting.

2017-11-24

Hi Folks,

That Power Query webinar that I’m doing for the global Power BI team is on this week.

Love to see you attend.

Registration is here: https://info.microsoft.com/CO-PowerBI-WBNR-FY17-08Aug-25-PowerQuery-PowerBI-Registration.html

2016-08-24