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PROLOGIKA BLOG · IDEAS FROM THE FIELD

Making sense of data.
Sharing what we learn.

Practical perspectives on Microsoft Fabric, Power BI, semantic models, and the work of turning data into insight.

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Atlanta MS BI and Power BI Group Meeting on April 4th

Please join us online for the next Atlanta MS BI and Power BI Group meeting on Monday, April 4th, at 6:30 PM ET.  Michael Carlo (Power BI MVP) will show how to speed up your data modeling experience by using DAX templates. For more details and sign up, visit our group page. Presentation: World's Fastest DAX - Using Quick DAX Templates Date: April 4th Time:…

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5 Storage Gotchas for Power BI Dataflows

Over the past few years, the BI industry has come up with new file formats, such as Parquet, ORC, and Avro, which are widely used today. To facilitate its vision for cross-industry data integration, Microsoft introduced a few years ago the Common Data Model (CDM) and CDM Folders. Power BI dataflows output CSV files to CDM folders and each table is saved in its own…

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Referencing Columns in DAX Table Variables

Suppose you use a DAX table variable, such as to group by certain columns and add an extension column as a calculation. Then, you want to count the rows in the table by filtering on one of the columns. At your first attempt, you might try using CALCULATE. VAR _t = ADDCOLUMNS(SUMMARIZE(…), "SomeColumn", <some expression>) RETURN CALCULATE(COUNTROWS(_t), _t[SomeColumn] = something) You'll get an error that…

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Data Integration Options with Cloud Providers

It's unlikely to envision a data analytics solution without having to ingest data from some cloud vendor. I previously ranted here about cloud prohibitors – cloud providers that negate the benefits of moving to the cloud by enforcing all sorts of hoops to get to your data. This blog summarizes a few data integration options with cloud vendors from best to worst. Direct access to…

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Atlanta MS BI and Power BI Group Meeting on March 7th

Please join us online for the next Atlanta MS BI and Power BI Group meeting on Monday, March 7th, at 6:30 PM ET.  Elayne Jones (Consultant with BlueGranite) will cover the pros and cons of migrating semantic models from Azure Analysis Services to Power BI. For more details and sign up, visit our group page. Presentation: Migrating Azure Analysis Services Models to PBI Premium Date:…

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How Power BI Broke Amazon

Amazon started in 1994 as an online marketplace for books. You'd think that after being in this business for almost 30 years, they've figured out the book ecommerce inside out. Unfortunately, rapid revisions (I revise annually my Power BI book) break their model. Every new revision wreaks havoc in the customer experience to purchase a book and punishes the publisher. Here is what I've learned…

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Power BI Dynamic M Query Parameters Reloaded

In a previous blog from October 2020, I ranted about the narrow list of data sources supported by Power BI Dynamic M query parameters. The February 2022 update of Power BI Desktop expanded the feature reach to relational data sources, such as SQL Server (all flavors), Oracle, Teradata, and SAP. This warranted a second look to see where we're now and where we're going. Dynamic…

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Azure Data Engineer Badge Acquired

Just passed the Microsoft DP-203 exam and added yet another badge to my certification portfolio. This certification is one of the requirements for partners to maintain Microsoft Gold Data Analytics Competency, so I'm glad to take this off my list.

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Atlanta MS BI and Power BI Group Meeting on February 7th

Please join us online for the next Atlanta MS BI and Power BI Group meeting on Monday, February 7th, at 6:30 PM ET.  Your humble correspondent will show you different techniques to implement scorecards with Power BI. For more details and sign up, visit our group page. Download the presentation assets here. Presentation: Implementing Scorecards Date: February 7th Time: 6:30 – 8:30 PM ET Place:…

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DirectQuery Performance Progression

So much data, so little budget! Caching data in Power BI gives you the best report performance, but budget constraints usually put downward pressure to stay within lower Power BI Premium premium plans. So, what to do? Split large models. Remember that Power BI Premium Gen2 grants each dataset a 25 GB memory quota. I'm actually a big proponent for consolidated organizational semantic models, but…

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