Sifiso W. Ndlovu

How to Programmatically Pass Credentials in an Embedded Power BI Report

November 20, 2018 by

In the article, How to embed a Power BI Report Server report into an ASP.Net web application, we looked at available options for embedding a Power BI Report Server report into an ASP.NET web application. Since the publication of the article, I have received several questions relating to how one goes about programmatically passing credentials for report server connection within an embedded Power BI Report Server report. The simple answer to such questions is that it is currently not possible to implement user impersonation in an embedded Power BI Report Server. However, like in most scenarios, there are workarounds that one could temporarily employ – at least until Microsoft comes up with a permanent solution to what is becoming a top requested feature at ideas.powerbi.com.

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Ahmad Yaseen

A new SQL Execution Plan viewer

November 20, 2018 by

In the previous articles of this series (see the index at bottom), we discussed many aspects of the SQL Execution Plans, starting with the main concept of SQL Execution Plan generation, diving in the different types of the plans and showing how to analyze the components and operators of the SQL Execution Plans.

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Istvan Martinka

CDS for apps in the [POWER WORLD]

November 19, 2018 by

Executive Summary

CDS for Apps VS Power Query – is there a difference? If so, what is that difference? Are they mutually exclusive or complement each other? Later I briefly outline Common Data Services for Analytics no, Power BI Datapools no again, actually Power BI Data Flows. It is difficult to keep up with the correct naming.

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Prashanth Jayaram

Overview of the SQL CAST and SQL CONVERT functions in SQL Server

November 16, 2018 by

This article is an effort to discuss SQL Cast and SQL Convert functions as a follow-up to previous articles, in which we’ve discussed several SQL tips such as SQL Date, SQL Coalesce, SQL Union, SQL Join, SQL Like, SQL String etc.

Sometimes we need to convert data between different SQL data types. In addition to working with data, there are some built-in functions can be used to convert the data. So let’s take a closer look at the SQL conversion functions SQL CAST and SQL CONVERT in detail.

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Bojan Petrovic

SQL Join introduction and overview

November 15, 2018 by

A SQL Join clause is put within a Select statement and at the end, it’s given a join condition, which tells the database how to fetch your data. The column specified within the join condition must be preceded by a table name if the column name is the same in both tables. When a column is preceded with a table name, it’s known as a qualified column.

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Ahmad Yaseen

SQL Execution Plan enhancements in SSMS 18.0

November 13, 2018 by

This article will provide an overview of the SSMS 18.0 with particular focus on improvements to the SQL execution plan feature. To work with Microsoft SQL Server Database Engine, you need to have an environment to edit, debug and deploy scripts written in different languages such as T-SQL, DAX, MDX, XML and JSON. In addition, you need a GUI tool that helps you to configure, query, monitor and administrate your SQL Server instances wherever they are hosted; locally at your machine, on a remote Windows or Linux server or in the cloud. All this can be achieved using SQL Server Management Studio aka SSMS.

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Esat Erkec

How to use JSON data in Azure Machine Learning

November 9, 2018 by

Azure Machine Learning (also known as Azure ML) is cloud-based machine learning solution of Microsoft. Microsoft Azure Machine Learning is a fully-managed cloud-based service that provides the ability to create and train predictive analytic solutions. Another advantage of Azure ML is that you can access and easily make changes anywhere in machine learning models with help of Microsoft Azure Machine Learning Studio.

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Rajendra Gupta
SQL Server 2019 columnstore index execution plan

Columnstore Index Enhancements in SQL Server 2019 – Part 1

November 9, 2018 by

SQL Server was launched in 1993 on WinNT and it completed its 25-year anniversary recently. SQL Server has come a long way since its first release. At the same time, Microsoft announced a preview version of SQL Server 2019. SQL Server 2019 provides the ability to extend its support to big data, Apache Spark, Hadoop distributed file system (HDFS) and provides enhancements to database performance, security, new features, and enhancements to SQL Server on Linux.

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Prashanth Jayaram

Getting Started with Azure Cosmos DB and MongoDB API

November 7, 2018 by

In the previous article on Azure Cosmos DB, we reviewed NoSQL concepts and how to integrate with the Microsoft Azure platform-as-a-service model using the API. After working as a database engineer for over a decade, I feel that this technology is the future for many organizations for various reasons. I had that in mind as I wrote this article which will provide basic information and help you to get started with MongoDB API integration. The MongoDB API works with BSON documents. BSON is MongoDB’s binary-encoded-version of JSON, and it extends the JSON model with additional language feature support. It’s a great effort from Microsoft to build the enterprise solutions which provide flexibility in manage distributed data along with scalable option.

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Craig Porteous

How to secure Reporting Services with Group Managed Service Accounts

November 7, 2018 by

With Reporting Services’ (SSRS) ability to scale out to multiple hosts, you may quickly come across the need to reuse domain accounts. Updating passwords for such accounts becomes a lengthy and risky process often requiring downtime. You may have a reliable process, set in stone for updating service account credentials every 30, 60 or 90 days or you could be stumbling across accounts that haven’t changed in 5 years and the passwords are in a shared text file somewhere. In either case, there’s risk that’s hard to mitigate without magically creating more hours in the day.

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