BI-NSIGHT – Power BI (Community Blog Highlights – Power BI Germany – Latest Updates for Power BI Desktop – How Microsoft uses Power BI to run its Cloud Business – Connecting Datasets to Power BI Service) – SQL Saturday Brisbane (I’m presenting) – SQL Server (SQL Server 2017 – DAX Editor for SSDT – New Get Data Experience for SSDT)
I thought that this might be a quieter week, but once again there are a whole host of updates from Power BI updates, to SQL Server 2017 announcements. Quite a bit to read through so I hope you enjoy it.
Power BI – Community Blog Highlights
I actively participate in the Power BI Community, as well as when I feel like I have something meaningful that will also contribute to the Power BI Community get it published onto the Power BI Community Blog. And in this month’s highlights I am thrilled to have my latest blog post as part of the highlight.
The other posts are below:
Power BI – Infographic for Power BI from an end to end perspective, by Gilbert Quevauvilliers
Design Pattern – Groups and Super Groups!, by Greg Deckler
Get Your Own Power Query Editor using Notepad++, by Lars Schreiber
What I Learnt Building Power BI Custom Visuals, by Chamara Ranasinghe
A Simple and Fun Guide to Microsoft Flow and Power BI, by Ruth Pozuelo
The Ultimate Waterfall Chart , by Klaus Birringer
Power BI – Germany
I know from personal experience that having your data reside in the same country you are working from means a much easier and broader adoption of Power BI. Now for people living in Germany they are able to fully comply with all the requirements in terms of having data hosted within Power BI.
As a side note I also saw that Microsoft is the first company to offer a data centre in South Korea which is great to see.
You can find the blog post details here: Experience your data with Power BI Germany and meet your compliance and regulatory needs
Power BI – Latest Updates for Power BI Desktop
I recently came across this link below, which always will point to the latest details with regards to the Power BI Desktop.
I would suggest bookmarking this page, to ensure you always have the latest information available.
https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/powerbi-desktop-latest-update/
Power BI – How Microsoft uses Power BI to run its Cloud Business
This is a really interesting blog post where they details how Microsoft uses Power BI to monitor Power BI as well as all the other BI components that fall under James Phillips. What amazes me is that for each of the KPIs shown in the screen there is a General Manager responsible for that particular product.
What this also shows is how to build an effective KPI dashboard which is easy to view and know when something is not going as it should.
You can find the interesting read here: How Microsoft uses Power BI to run its growing cloud business
Power BI – Connecting to the dataset in the Power BI Service
In this blog post from the Power BI team they go into some details around how and why you would want to use the Power BI Dataset in the Power BI Service.
One thing that I found interesting and I guess I had never thought of is that you can now connect to ANY dataset that has been published to the Power BI Service. This includes datasets from Curated Content Packs which makes the development experience that much easier.
You can find the details here: Connecting to datasets in the Power BI service from Desktop
SQL Saturday Brisbane – I’m Presenting on Power BI Real World Tips and Tricks
I am so excited that I will presenting for the first time at SQL Saturday Brisbane on Saturday 27 May 2017.
The session details are Power BI Real world tips and tricks. Below is the session excerpt:
Out in the real world, people are starting to use Power BI to gain insights into their data that were previously never seen. With Gilbert currently working full time in Power BI projects, he has first hand experience on how to leverage Power BI in work place.
By providing real world, real working examples I plan to show how some simple tips and tricks can make their reports and dashboards amazing and insightful. This will be an interactive and demo rich presentation.
The real world tips will cover the following sections of Power BI:
- Query Editor
- DAX
- Visuals
- Power BI Service
You can register for SQL Saturday here: SQL Saturday Brisbane – 27 May 2017
SQL Server – SQL Server 2017
I personally think that with the release date of SQL Server 2017, that Microsoft is looking to continue what it has been doing with the combination of experience with Power BI and deploying updates to Azure SQL Server.
This is allowing them to deploy and implement changes to SQL Server in at a faster pace. I do also personally think that with the deployment and testing with Azure, they can test real world scenario’s with a diverse environment to make sure that it works as expected. This allows them to then take all these learnings and put it into an On-Premise Solution.
You can find the details here: SQL Server 2017
SQL Server – DAX Editor for SSDT
It was just a matter of time before the DAX editor became part of SSDT (SQL Server Data Tools) and now it is finally here.
This will no doubt make the creation and editing of measures and calculated columns a lot easier and quicker to develop.
They are planning to have Intellisense as well as Code Formatting in future releases
You can find the details here: Introducing a DAX Editor Tool Window for SSDT Tabular
SQL Server – What’s new in SQL Server 2017 for Analysis Services
As you can see above there have been a whole host of enhancements for Analysis Services in SQL Server 2017.
The new Object-Level Security to secure more data looks really interesting in that you can now also secure it on a column level. As well as performance improvements for the developer experience, which I personally know in the past at times was particularly slow.
Along with improvements to the DMV’s, similar Date Hierarchy implementations that are currently in Power BI.
As well as other improvements you can read about here: What’s new in SQL Server 2017 CTP 2.0 for Analysis Services
SQL
Server – New Get Data Experience
With the new release of SSDT they have updated the Get Data Experience for SSAS models with level 1400.
It appears that they are looking to align with what is currently being implemented in Power BI, which is fantastic to see because it will mean a more consistent developer experience.
They are continuing to add more data sources with each release.
You can find all the details here: New Get Data Capabilities in the GA Release of SSDT Tabular 17.0 (April 2017)