Aveek Das

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Aveek has been working as an Analytics Engineer for the past couple of years now. His main areas of interest are SQL Server, SSIS, and SSAS.In his leisure, he likes to keep his skills sharp by writing articles on his blog and other forums. He is also an amateur photographer and hops around to do street photography.

You can find him on LinkedIn

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Getting started with Amazon S3 and Python

July 31, 2020 by Aveek Das

In this article, I am going to explain what Amazon S3 is and how to connect to it using python. This article will be focused on beginners who are trying to get their hands on in python and working around the AWS ecosystem. AWS, as you might know, is one of the largest cloud providers along with Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform. There are a lot of services offered by Amazon including AWS S3. Amazon S3, also abbreviated as Amazon Simple Storage Service is a storage service offered by the cloud provider that enables the users to store any kind of files in this service. It is designed to make web-scale computing easier for developers.

Working with Power BI Data Models in Visual Studio Code

July 30, 2020 by Aveek Das

In this article, I am going to introduce the Tabular Object Model (TOM) in the Power BI Data Model and provide an understanding of how this model can be accessed outside of the Power BI environment. For the sake of this tutorial, we are going to use the Visual Studio Code to simply write a dotnet console application and try to access the Tabular Object Model from the Power BI file. With the help of this knowledge, programmers and BI developers can not only view the underlying model in the Power BI Data Model but also can enhance the data model programmatically by writing a few lines of code. It can also be further improved by automating the creation of the Power BI models with the help of the Tabular Object Model library in dotnet.

Diving deep with complex Data Structures

July 29, 2020 by Aveek Das

In my previous article, Understanding common Data Structures, I have mentioned the most commonly used data structures in software programming. In this article, let us get into some more details about the other data structures that are a bit complex than the ones already discussed but also used quite often while designing software applications. Here, we will look into the following data structures.

Understanding the SQL MERGE statement

July 27, 2020 by Aveek Das

In this article, I am going to give a detailed explanation of how to use the SQL MERGE statement in SQL Server. The MERGE statement in SQL is a very popular clause that can handle inserts, updates, and deletes all in a single transaction without having to write separate logic for each of these. You can specify conditions on which you expect the MERGE statement to insert, update, or delete, etc.

Understanding common Data Structures

July 15, 2020 by Aveek Das

In this article, I am going to walk you through the concepts of the common Data Structures that every student, colleague working with computers should be aware of. Data Structure forms an integral part of any system or database design. It is a very interesting and intuitive concept that you can apply anywhere. Through this article, I aim to introduce the beginners to the concepts of Data Structures and brush up the same for colleagues who have already been associated with the industry for years. This will also help you understand some database concepts more easily once you have a grasp over these concepts.

Migrate Power BI reports between multiple workspaces

July 14, 2020 by Aveek Das

In this article, I am going to explain how we can create a Power BI Report using the Power BI Desktop and then publish it to the Power BI service workspace. Once the report is published to a workspace, we can also consider migrating the same report across several workspaces and all this can be done programmatically by using the Power BI REST APIs. This article is specially targeted towards Power BI admins or DevOps team whose task is to migrate dashboards between various environments like Development, QA, Production, etc. without any manual intervention of the reports.

Getting started with SSISDB

July 13, 2020 by Aveek Das

In this article, I am going to explain how to start using the SSISDB database, also known as the SSIS Catalog database. In my previous article, I have provided an overview of this SSIS catalog database in detail. I would recommend you read that article, before moving on further with this if you want to understand how the SSIS catalog database works. The SSIS catalog database is one single database in which you can deploy all your SSIS packages and then organize and manage those packages centrally.

Deploy Python apps to Azure Functions using Visual Studio Code

July 10, 2020 by Aveek Das

In this article, we are going to build a small python application and deploy it to Azure Functions. The development and the deployment will be done using the Visual Studio (VS) Code. As you might be aware, VS Code is one of the most widely used and preferred code editors for programmers. It is a cross-platform tool, which means you can install this tool on any operating system of your choice, starting from Windows, Linux, or Mac OS.

How to debug Python scripts in Visual Studio Code

July 8, 2020 by Aveek Das

In this article, I am going to explain how we can easily debug Python scripts using the Visual Studio (VS) Code. In my previous article on this topic, I have explained how to set up a development environment to start coding in Python. I would definitely recommend reading that article if you have not setup your Visual Studio Code environment yet. This article can be considered as a continuation from the above-mentioned steps as I am assuming that you are already into programming in Python using the VS Code.

Introduction to the SSIS Catalog database (SSISDB)

July 7, 2020 by Aveek Das

In this article, I am going to explain in detail the SSIS catalog that can be used to deploy SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) projects. Using this catalog, developers and database administrators can easily deploy and manage their integration services projects after deployment. The SSIS Catalog database was introduced in SQL Server 2012 and prior to that users had the following three options to deploy their SSIS packages:

Add users to a Power BI workspace using PowerShell

July 6, 2020 by Aveek Das

In this article, I am going to explain how to add users to a Power BI workspace using Power BI PowerShell. As you already know, Power BI is a business intelligence tool from Microsoft, using which we can build graphical reports and dashboards which bring some sense to our data that resides on the database. Power BI also has a web interface known as the Power BI service, which can be used to share and collaborate these reports and dashboards with multiple users within or out of the organization.

Understanding SSIS memory usage

July 3, 2020 by Aveek Das

In this article, I am going to explain in detail about SSIS memory usage and how can we optimize out tasks and the data flow to leverage maximum benefits from the in-memory operating tool. As you might be aware, SSIS also known as SQL Server Integration Services is a data integration tool, provided by Microsoft which comes shipped with the SQL Server editions. SSIS is an enterprise-scale, in-memory data integration tool which can be used to move data between different databases or different servers in a comfortable yet manageable way.

Setting up Visual Studio Code for Python Development

July 1, 2020 by Aveek Das

In this article, I am going to explain how to set up your Visual Studio Code for Python Development. Visual Studio Code or, popularly known as VS Code, is one of the free and open-source code editors developed by Microsoft and is mostly preferred by developers of all the major programming languages due to its flexibility and other integrated development tools like debugging, IntelliSense, etc. Visual Studio Code is available to be downloaded for all the major operating systems like Windows, Linux, and macOS. You can visit https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/ to download it based on the OS you are using.

Getting started with Azure Function Apps

June 25, 2020 by Aveek Das

In this article, I am going to explain how to get started with Azure Function Apps. In my previous article, An introduction to Serverless Applications, I have mentioned the serverless architecture and the various cloud offerings to develop serverless applications. As we know, in serverless architecture, the users only write the business logic code, and all other worries are taken care of by the cloud provider. This helps businesses to quickly implement solutions and ship it to customers with more quality. Also, another important point about serverless applications is that they are scalable on-demand, which means as a developer, we no longer need to monitor or manually pull up the resources when the executions are more.

An introduction to Serverless Applications

June 25, 2020 by Aveek Das

In this article, I am going to describe what are serverless applications and how are these developed. I will also introduce the concepts of serverless computing and how to deploy one using Azure Functions. This article is targeted towards most of the data professionals who want to gain some basic knowledge of serverless applications and the underlying architecture and cloud computing. In recent times, cloud computing has become one of the most important domains for many big organizations and it has thus become essential for all to have some basic information on the same.

Getting started with Amazon QuickSight

June 18, 2020 by Aveek Das

In this article, I am going to introduce Amazon QuickSight and how to visualize data using it. Amazon QuickSight is a data visualization tool offered by Amazon hosted on AWS and is available across multiple locations. As per the statement provided on the official website it says: “Amazon QuickSight is a fast, cloud-powered business intelligence service that makes it easy to deliver insights to everyone in your organization.” Using QuickSight, users can create different analyses and then integrate those in a dashboard and share them with people within the organization.

Getting started with parameterized Power BI reports

June 16, 2020 by Aveek Das

In this article, I am going to explain how we can develop parameterized Power BI reports locally and then migrate the same report across multiple environments, like development, QA, and production. Parameterized Power BI reports are essential because we can use the same report to develop the charts and the KPIs and then provide the same report to the QA who will test it on a separate environment and finally when the testing is completed, it can then maybe provided to an administrator who can publish it to the production workspace.

Calling an AWS Lambda function from another Lambda function

June 9, 2020 by Aveek Das

In this article, I am going to explain how to create an AWS Lambda function and then call this function from another Lambda function within the same region. This is a useful scenario in which we may need to execute a second lambda function based on the outcome of some previous logic. Another scenario may be to execute a second lambda function several times by using different parameters.

Getting started with AWS Toolkit for Visual Studio Code

June 8, 2020 by Aveek Das

In this article, I am going to explain how to start using the AWS Toolkit for Visual Studio Code to develop serverless functions locally. Serverless applications or functions gives us the ability to develop, test and execute code in the cloud without having to worry about the underlying infrastructure. These applications are scalable which means we can easily increase or decrease the resources consumed by them. AWS Toolkit for Visual Studio Code is an extension available for Visual Studio Code using which we can directly communicate with the resources on Amazon within the code editor.

Using a Date Dimension Table in Power BI

June 5, 2020 by Aveek Das

In this article, I am going to describe how to use a date dimension table in Power BI. Using a date dimension table becomes extremely important while visualizing facts and figures over some time in the calendar. Sometimes it is possible that we do not have the continuous date values in our dataset that we are trying to work upon.

Exploring actions and tasks in the SQLPackage Utility

June 4, 2020 by Aveek Das

In this article, I am going to explain in detail about actions and tasks in the SQLPackage Utility. In my previous article, I have explained the overview of the SQLPackage utility. The SQLPackage utility is a command-line utility tool provided by Microsoft to automate SQL Server database deployments. Since this utility is cross-platform, you can easily install it on any operating system of your choice. SQLPackage actions are the types of functions that we can achieve with this utility. You can install this utility directly on any production server and it can be used as is. You can find more information about this utility and SQLPackage actions from the official documentation from Microsoft.

A quick overview of the Microsoft Power Platform

June 2, 2020 by Aveek Das

In this article, I am going to explain the various products offered by the Microsoft Power Platform. Microsoft Power Platform is a group of products offered by Microsoft to develop and build complex business solutions, analyze, and draw data visualizations, automate a business process, or build virtual agents for communication. All these products offer a platform in which no code is required to build the applications. These products are in the form of simple GUI which can be used by any business users or developers, thus helping to reduce the need for IT in the organization.

Overview of the Grafana Dashboard with SQL

June 2, 2020 by Aveek Das

In this article, I am going to demonstrate how to set up Grafana Dashboard for real-time analytics or data monitoring purposes. Grafana is an open-source, cross-platform analytics service tool that can be used to fetch data from several data sources, and then the data can be visualized in a much intuitive way in the form of bars and graphs. This is quite a useful feature for the DevOps or the IT team as it can make their job easier to find abnormalities or spikes in the production environment by observing the logs generated.

Getting Started with the SQLPackage Utility

May 28, 2020 by Aveek Das

In this article, I’m going to explain in detail about the SQLPackage utility that is provided by Microsoft in order to automate database deployments. In my previous article regarding Data-Tier Applications in SQL Server, I have mentioned how to create a DACPAC and a BACPAC file from an existing SQL Server Database. The underlying technology behind creating the DACPAC and the BACPAC files is the SQLPackage utility, which helps to create those files.

How to configure an Amazon RDS environment for MySQL

May 26, 2020 by Aveek Das

In this article, I am going to explain how to configure the RDS MySQL Environment in AWS. RDS is the Relational Database Service Available from the Amazon which enables us to spin up any relational database instance without having to worry about the infrastructure behind it. Users can connect to this instance very easily and start building database applications with ease. This article will focus more on how to configure the RDS MySQL Environment and not much on the MySQL details.