Blog – Page 27 – Prologika

Where is Teo in September?

September 3, 2018 / No Comments »

I have a few public events in September (all in Atlanta). Sep 11-12: 2-day Power BI open enrollment workshop Sep 20: "10 Ways to Empower Your BI Strategy with Power BI" presentation for DAMA Sep 22: "Bridge Analytics and Developer Worlds with Power BI and PowerApps" presentation for SQL Saturday – BI Sep 25: Meeting of Atlanta MS BI and Power BI Group at the MS office in Avalon These events are also on my calendar.
Power BI Dataset Size Limits

September 1, 2018 / No Comments »

Question: What's the maximum dataset size Power BI can support? Answer: As of now (Sep 1, 2018), the maximum dataset size that Power BI Pro can support is 1 GB. The maximum dataset size with Power BI Premium and Power BI Embedded is 10 GB but it depends on the SKU purchased. Power BI Premium Plan Power BI Embedded Plan Max Dataset Size and Memory P1 A1 3 GB P2 A2 5 GB P3 and higher A3 or higher 10 GB The important point is "as of now", as with everything cloud these limits will probably get higher soon. Also, recall that Power BI compresses data well so don't jump to conclusions of how many rows a dataset can pack if you base the estimate solely on the dataset original size. For example, a 100 MB Excel file might compress to 10 megabytes. The limits apply to datasets after compression. So,...
Power BI Sharing Is Getting Better

August 26, 2018 / No Comments »

A Power BI training or assessment won't be complete unless I get hammered on the Power BI sharing limitations. So far, I could only mumble something to the extent of "I agree that Power BI sharing sucks big time", look for the exit and suggest an unplanned break. Fortunately, it looks like quantitative accumulations from unhappy corporate customers have resulted in qualitative changes as Microsoft is getting serious about addressing these limitations. To me, as it stands today, the Power BI sharing is a classic example of overengineering. Something that could have been easily solved with the conventional and simple folders a la SSRS, morphed into some farfetched "cool" vision of workspaces and apps without much practical value. Let's revisit the current Power BI sharing limitations to understand why change was due: Workspace dependency on Office 365 groups – This results in explosion of workspaces as Power BI is not...
Atlanta MS BI and Power BI Group Meeting on August 28

August 23, 2018 / No Comments »

MS BI fans, join us for the next Atlanta MS BI and Power BI Group meeting on Monday, August 28th, Tuesday at 6:30 PM at the Microsoft office in Alpharetta (our regular venue room is being renovated). If you haven't been at the new MS office, prepare to be impressed! Mark Tabladillo, Ph.D, from Microsoft will show you how to advanced analytics with Power BI. Accelebrate will sponsor the meeting. For more details, visit our group page and don't forget to RSVP (use the RSVP survey on the main page) if you're planning to attend. Presentation: Advanced Analytics with Power BI Date: August 28, 2018, Tuesday Time 6:30 – 8:30 PM ET Place: Microsoft Office (Alpharetta) 8000 Avalon Boulevard Suite 900 Alpharetta, GA 30009 Overview: Power BI has become an increasingly important data analytics tool. This presentation focuses on the advanced analytics options currently available in Power BI. Attendees to this talk will see:...
Conducting Two General Enrollment Workshops in Atlanta

August 21, 2018 / No Comments »

I rarely teach classes open to the public so take advantage of this exclusive opportunity to increase your data IQ! After course completion and by the end of the year, all course attendees will receive a free, one-hour, follow-up consultation with me on any Power BI or SQL Server related topic. Register today for these in-person and instructor-led training events as seating is limited. 2-Day Applied Power BI Workshop Date: Sep 11 and 12, 2018 Time: 8:30 AM – 5 PM Location: Microsoft Office in Alpharetta Catering: lunch provided Syllabus: available here Price: $999 (use coupon POWERBI20180911 for an instant 5% discount if you sign up two or more attendees from your company) For more information and to register, go to http://bit.ly/pbiworkshop201809 2-Day Applied DAX with Power BI Workshop Date: Oct 15 and 16, 2018 Time: 8:30 AM – 5 PM Location: Microsoft Office in Alpharetta Catering: lunch provided Syllabus: available here Price: $999 (use coupon SQL201810 for an instant...
Finding Data Movement Bottlenecks

August 18, 2018 / No Comments »

As you've heard, data volumes are increasing and putting pressure on BI practitioners to do more with less within ever shrinking processing windows. I've provided some ETL best practices in various blogs, such as my "Is ETL (E)ating (T)hou (L)ive?" newsletter. A few additional considerations regarding data movement bottlenecks came from two recent projects targeting SQL Server. Slow Network If you're loading data from data sources on Wide Area Network (WAN), network speed is probably going to be a major concern. While LAN enjoys speeds at around 1,000 Mbps, you'll probably find WAN speeds to be x10 less. You can use the network tab in the Windows Task Manager to find the network throughput. The next step is to determine how much it slows down data movement using a simple approach: Remote in to the remote server. Open SSMS, create a query, and execute a SELECT statement from the your...
A First Look at Power BI Aggregations

August 13, 2018 / No Comments »

During the "Building a data model to support 1 trillion rows of data and more with Microsoft Power BI Premium" presentation at the Business Applications Summit, Microsoft discussed the technical details of how the forthcoming "Aggregations" feature can help you implement fast summarized queries on top of huge datasets. Following incremental refresh and composite models, aggregations are the next "pro" feature that debuts in Power BI and it aims to make it a more attractive option for deploying organizational semantic models. In this blog, I summarize my initial observations of this feature which should be available for preview in the September release of Power BI. Aggregations are not a new concept to BI practitioners tackling large datasets. Ask a DBA what's the next course of action after all tricks are exhausted to speed up massive queries and his answer would be summarized tables. That's what aggregations are: predefined summaries of...
Understanding Power BI Dual Storage

August 5, 2018 / No Comments »

The July release of Power BI Desktop introduced composite models, which I wrote about in my blog "Power BI Composite Models: The Good, The Bad, The Ugly" Composite models make data acquisition much more flexible but also more complex. A Power BI table can now be configured in one of these storage modes: Import – The table caches the data. All Power BI features work. DirectQuery – The table has only the metadata while the data is left at the data source. When users interact with the report, Power BI generates DAX queries to the Analysis Services server hosting the model, which in turn generates native queries to the data source. DirectQuery supports limited Power Query transformations and DAX functions in calculated columns, as described in more details here. Besides Power Query and DAX limitations, DirectQuery and Live Connections have feature limitations, as I discussed in my blog "Power BI...
Great Atlanta MS BI and Power BI Group Meeting Last Night

July 31, 2018 / No Comments »

A good turnout last night for our Atlanta MS BI and Power BI Group July meeting. Some 60+ attended the meeting at the MTC office at Avalon. Kudos to Scott Fairbanks for the great presentation and CCG for sponsoring the meeting. Thanks to Microsoft for hosting us. We'll make the slides available shortly at http://atlantabi.pass.org/Resources.aspx.
Power BI News from the Microsoft Business Applications Summit

July 28, 2018 / No Comments »

If you haven't done so, watch the "Power BI and the Future for Modern and Enterprise BI" presentation from the Business Applications Summit (July 22-24) to find where Microsoft is bringing Power BI in the next few months. Power BI Service Scale and Adoption 19M data models hosted 58M monthly publish to web views 8M+ report and dashboard queries/hour Power BI a top 10 fastest growing skill according to Upwork Microsoft will extend Power BI by investing in three main areas: Unified platform for both self-service and enterprise BI Intuitive experience that drive a data culture Pervasive Artificial Intelligence for BI Here are most important forthcoming near-future features across these three areas: Unified platform for both self-service and enterprise BI Make Power BI Desktop a better tool for larger models -- new diagram view with perspectives, multi-select fields to set common properties (it's about time to have this feature), display...