PROLOGIKA BLOG · IDEAS FROM THE FIELD
Practical perspectives on Microsoft Fabric, Power BI, semantic models, and the work of turning data into insight.
Explore the latest articles
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…
Read article
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…
Read article
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,…
Read article
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…
Read article
MS BI fans, join us for the next Atlanta MS BI and Power BI Group meeting on June 3, Monday, at 6:30 PM at the Microsoft office in Alpharetta. I'll show you how to bridge the analytical and developer worlds by integrating Power BI with PowerApps. Eric Flamm will demonstrate SQL Notebooks in Azure Data Studio. Prologika will sponsor the event. For more details, visit our group page and don't forget to…
Read article
I'm excited to announce my latest book: "Applied DAX with Power BI: From zero to hero with 15-minute lessons". This book was born out of necessity. In my consulting practice, I had been teaching and implementing Power BI and Analysis Services Tabular, and people were constantly asking for DAX book recommendations. Indeed, DAX is not an easy topic and has its ways to humble even…
Read article
SQL Saturday Atlanta next Saturday might break the attendance record with over 900+ people registered! Kudos to the organizers. It's not easy to organize an event of this size with a modest budget. I'll present "What's New for BI in SQL Server 2019" at 1 PM. "SQL Server 2019 delivers important data analytics features and enhancements. Join this session to discover what BI features are…
Read article
Scenario: You have a dimension table and a fact table, and you want to generate some test data, such by randomly looking up a value from the dimension table for each row in the fact table. The following DAX formula should get the job done but RANDBETWEEN doesn't work (although it works as a standalone function outside LOOKUPVALUE). Specifically, you get either the same value…
Read article
Business Performance Management (BPM) is a methodology to help the company predict its performance. An integral part of a BPM strategy is a process for Budgeting, Planning, and Forecasting which is typically performed by the Finance department. When it comes to Finance, nothing is simple, and BPM is no exception. This diagram illustrates what typical data movement might look like to consolidate BPM areas into…
Read article MS BI fans, join us for the next Atlanta MS BI and Power BI Group meeting on May 6, Monday, at 6:30 PM at the Microsoft office in Alpharetta. Patrick LeBlanc, a Principal Program Manager at Microsoft, will show us how to integrate Power BI and Flow for geospatial analytics. I'll showcase Power BI Report Builder. TEKSystems will sponsor the event. For more details, visit our group page and don't forget…
Read article
