Scenario: A client reports a memory spike during processing. They have a Tabular semantic model deployed to Azure Analysis Services. They fully process the model daily. The model normally takes less than 50 GB RAM but during processing, it spikes five times and Azure Analysis Services terminates the processing task complaining that it "reached the maximum allowable memory in our pricing tier". Normally, fully processing…
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A data gateway is required for a cloud service, such as Power BI, to access on-prem data, either for live connections or for refreshing imported data. The gateway picked up an interesting feature to look up Active Directory on one property and return the value of another, which proved extremely useful for one client of mine. Scenario: An enterprise client has adopted a hybrid architecture…
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A recent engagement brought an interesting dilemma. An ISV wanted to embed Power BI reports in a SharePoint Online portal accessible by their customers. The app handles user authentication and authorization by following the "App owns data" pattern. However, apparently inspired by the Stalin's "No man, no problem" motto, SharePoint has decided to throw away custom server-side code, so we couldn't add an ASP.NET page…
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Got awarded for the elite Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) - Data Platform award again. I've been recognized by Microsoft for my expertise and contributions to the community for every year since 2004! Learn more about the MVP program at https://mvp.microsoft.com/en-us/Overview.
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As I discussed in "Power BI Sharing is Getting Better" and "Power BI Sharing is Getting Better 2", the Power BI sharing saga has been improving and Microsoft is closing gaps. As recently announced, Microsoft added an important Viewer role that grants view permissions to the workspace content. The most important part in the announcement is: "Viewer role requires a Pro license or for the…
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Scenario: A partitioned Tabular table generates SELECT statements that queries a massive range from the base table on a date column. The processing job is taking long time. The SELECT query plan shows Clustered Index Scan but there is an index on the date column. Why is SQL Server not using the index? Surely, it will speed things up, right? This is where the blaming…
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An interesting challenge today come up while mentoring finance users in Power BI. Consider the following Excel layout. The user wants to unpivot the data by rotating the three header rows (Scenario Type, Month, and Year) from columns to rows. The issue is that the headers span three rows. If you just select these columns and unpivot, you'll end up with a mess. And Power Query…
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After learning how to model the data properly (the most important skill), DAX would be the next hurdle in your self-service or organizational BI journey. You won't get far in Microsoft BI without DAX. This letter shares a tip on how to identify DAX performance bottlenecks by using a recent feature in Power BI called Performance Analyzer. Learning DAX Before I get to Performance Analyzer,…
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We had to wait four years but here they are: Power BI shared datasets are here. This makes it a good time to revisit the remaining Power BI sharing limitations, which I listed in my previous blog on the same subject. No nesting support – Workspaces can't be nested, such as to have a global Sales workspace that breaks down to Sales North America, Sales Europe,…
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May was a hectic month but June is even busier… I'm presenting and sponsoring the tomorrow's Power BI Group meeting and teaching a class on Tue and Wed. Then, on Saturday Guys in the Cube and I are kicking off the Power BI Palooza event at the Microsoft office in Alpharetta at 8:30 AM. I'm presenting "10 Ways to Empower Your BI Strategy with Power…
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