UPDATE 11/15/2018: Common Data Service for Analytics is superseded by Power BI dataflows. Find the updated review here. In a previous blog I discussed the Common Data Service for Apps (CDS for Apps). I explained that CDS for Apps is more suitable for OLTP-type applications, which is why its main client is PowerApps apps saving data in normalized tables. Since good things shouldn't come alone,…
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Power BI churns out new features fast but not all features are available everywhere. As one of the most confusing aspects of Power BI, feature availability depends on the data acquisition method (data import vs live connections) and across Power BI product offerings (Power BI Desktop, Power BI Service, Power BI Report Server, and Power BI Mobile). Microsoft has left gaps in the product documentation…
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MS BI fans, join us for the next Atlanta MS BI and Power BI Group meeting on Monday, May 21st at 6:30 PM. Paco González will take us into a deep dive into Microsoft Cognitive Services and how to integrate them with Power BI. SolidQ will sponsor the meeting. And your humble correspondent will introduce you to Power BI Premium incremental refresh. For more details, visit our…
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BI and data integration projects often benefit from an operational data source (ODS), whose benefits and design I discussed in my "Designing an Operational Data Store (ODS)" newsletter. Think of the Microsoft Common Data Service for Apps (CDS for Apps) as a cloud ODS by Business and for Business. Officially introduced in 2016 and running on Azure SQL Database, CDS for Apps is now the…
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Thank you to everyone attending the Power BI workshop by Prologika yesterday. We had another great turnout with more than 50 people from 30+ companies attending the event at the Microsoft Technology Center in Alpharetta! Kudos to Eric Flamm and Michael Folarinde for the great job proctoring the event. Here is some feedback that the attendees shared in the post-event survey: "I was frustrated and confused with…
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In my "Why Business Like Yours Choose Power BI Over Sisense" blog, I discussed how Sisense seeks a competitive advantage by offering a user-friendly designer connected to the their ElastiCube, thus claiming that Sisense is a better choice with larger datasets because business users don't have to use professional tools (Visual Studio) or deploy to external servers. Things have changed in Power BI since then.…
Read article MS BI fans, join us for the next Atlanta MS BI and Power BI Group meeting on Monday, April 30th at 6:30 PM. Patrick LeBlanc will do a deep dive into Power BI Report Server. TEKsystems will sponsor the meeting. And your humble correspondent will demo several latest Power BI features: buttons and Q&A. For more details, visit our group page and don't forget to RSVP (use the RSVP survey…
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Thank you to everyone attending the Power BI workshop by Prologika yesterday. We had great turnout with more than 50 people from 30 companies attending the event at the Microsoft Technology Center in Alpharetta! The key takeaways were: Many companies transition to Power BI because of its great value-to-cost proposition. PowerQuery is a fantastic tool for data cleansing and transformation that is missing in other…
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Chris Webb wrote a great post today "Power BI Roadmap Announcements In the Dynamics 365 Spring '18 Release Notes" citing the many exciting new features coming to Power BI in the next few months and highlighting the huge momentum behind Power BI. I want to bring your attention to a couple of them: Incremental data refresh: Organizations can use incremental data refresh to scale datasets…
Read article MS BI fans, join us for the next Atlanta MS BI and Power BI Group meeting on Monday, March 26th at 6:30 PM. Leo Furlong will introduce you to implementing organizational semantic models with Azure Analysis Services. BlueGranite will sponsor the meeting. And your humble correspondent will demo several latest Power BI features: persistent filters, tooltip pages, and share to anyone. For more details, visit our group page and don't forget…
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