How to plot a SQL Server 2017 graph database using PowerBI January 9, 2018 by Sifiso W. Ndlovu In the article How to plot a SQL Server 2017 graph database using SQL Server R, I highlighted the lack of built-in graph data visualisation as one major limitation of the SQL Server 2017 graph database feature. In the same article, I went on to suggest making use of SQL Server R as one workaround that could be utilised in order to successfully plot and visualise diagrams out of SQL Server 2017 graph database objects. However, whilst 3rd party graph database vendors such as Neo4j provide an interactive and hyperlinked graph diagrams that allows you to – amongst other things – easily drilldown and identify node-relationships as indicated in Figure 1, the graph plotted using SQL Server R is not very interactive in fact it is simply a static image file as shown in Figure 2. Read more »
How to manage Power BI dataset refresh failures November 30, 2017 by Craig Porteous As I covered in a previous post How to connect to (and query) Power BI and Azure using PowerShell, Power BI can be difficult to manage and administer, unlike on-premises BI solutions. One such concern that will often require quick action is the failure of a dataset refresh. If your reports and dashboards all rely on live connection or DirectQuery data sources like Azure SQL Database, Azure SQL Data Warehouse or SQL Server Analysis Services (on-premises or in Azure) then you won’t have to worry about dataset refreshes and this post will just be some interesting reading. Read more »
How to connect to (and query) Power BI and Azure using PowerShell September 13, 2017 by Craig Porteous Power BI “as a whole” is a bit of a black box. If you’re like me and used to using SQL Server & its components; SSRS, SSAS etc. you have access to installation directories, Event logs, trace logs, error logs, chocolate logs? You can see full instances & their contents in one go, whether that be databases, reports or cubes. It gives you the control over & responsibility for performance & maintenance. Read more »
How to create geographic maps in Power BI using ArcGIS August 11, 2017 by Andrea Martorana Tusa Introduction This is the fourth article of a series dedicated to discovering geographic map tools in Power BI. At the link below you can find out references to the previous article and the project’s goal: Read more »
How to create geographic maps in Power BI using custom shape maps June 22, 2017 by Andrea Martorana Tusa Introduction This is the third article of a series dedicated to discovering geographic maps in Power BI. At the link below you can find out references to the previous articles and the project’s goal: Read more »
How to create geographic maps in Power BI using built-in shape maps June 21, 2017 by Andrea Martorana Tusa Introduction This is the second article of a series dedicated to discovering geographic map tools in Power BI. At the link below you can find out references to the previous article and the project’s goal: Read more »
Reporting in SQL Server – Power BI Report Server June 13, 2017 by Minette Steynberg Power BI is a self-service business intelligence tool from Microsoft which has been steadily gaining momentum in the last couple of months. One of the well-known disadvantages of Power BI is that it is basically cloud only. A lot of companies are not yet at the point where they feel comfortable having their data in the cloud or are premise bound for some other reasons such as data-sensitivity, data-sovereignty or compliance. Read more »
Considerations for On-premises data in PowerBI June 7, 2017 by Craig Porteous Whether you’ve been using PowerBI for a while or you’re just getting started with it, chances are you’ll want to source at least some of your data from on-premises systems. Be that SQL server databases, Oracle, SSAS etc. The same process even applies if you’re sourcing from AWS which I’ll go into in more detail below. All of these data sources will require Microsoft’s On-Premises Data Gateway. Read more »
How to create geographic maps using Power BI – Filled and bubble maps April 5, 2017 by Andrea Martorana Tusa The project This is the first article of a series dedicated to discovering geographic maps in Power BI. My goal is to illustrate to you the different visuals available in Power BI for making maps. Remember that Power BI is a product undergoing constant evolution; new features are added every month at a fast pace. And over the time Power BI has gained more mapping capabilities compared to the starting point. Read more »
Using Power BI Desktop to connect to SQL Server and Facebook July 12, 2016 by Daniel Calbimonte Introduction Power BI is an extremely popular new Microsoft Tool to create reports. In a previous article, we talked about Power BI Cloud based services. In that article, we connected from a SQL Azure Data Warehouse database to the Power BI Cloud services. In this new article, we will work with the Power BI Desktop Tool from zero. The Power BI Desktop is a reporting software that can be installed in your Windows machine to create reports locally and connect to different data sources like Azure, SharePoint, Active Directory, Exchange, Facebook, Google Analytics and many other data sources. We will create Reports from a SQL Server database and finally we will extract information from Facebook. With Power BI, you can easily access to maps at street level around the world. Read more »
Create Azure Data Warehouse reports using Azure Power BI April 11, 2016 by Daniel Calbimonte Introduction Power BI is an extremely powerful tool to create dashboards and reports. In the last article, we learned how to create a Data Warehouse in Azure. In this new chapter, we will learn how to create reports from the Data Warehouse in Azure using Power BI in Azure. Read more »
