Bits of BI – June 29

In accordance with Thomas LaRock I decided to also start my round-up of news from around the block of SQL Server, Technology or anything vaguely related to BI. And I might include some other things as well if I feel like it.
My plan is to do a weekly round-up, let’s see how that works out.
My latest post was 2 weeks ago, but here’s a new one! As we’re starting to go into summer and holidays, I might skip one edition in August also.

But for now, here’s the next edition of Bits of BI!

• SSMS 17.8 is now available by Pam Lahoud (sqlgoddess)
  Download SSMS 17.8 or review the Release Notes to get started.
• Does It Matter Which Field Goes First in an Index? by Brent Ozar (@BrentO)
  Some index 101 knowledge, but thoroughly explained. And as Brent says: index field order matters a LOT.
• Biml Express 2018 is here!
  It includes support for VS 2017, SSIS package import and many other things. Cathrine (@Cathrine) and Andy (@AndyLeonard) also blogged about it. Go download Biml Express 2018 or check the change log for all updates.
• Announcing the GroupBy September Lineup by Brent Ozar (@BrentO)
  The next (online and free) GroupBy conference is on Friday September 7, and will contain mainly SQL sessions this time.
• Stairway to Azure DataBricks by Leila Etaati (@leila_etaati)
  Leila already started with Part 1 and Part 2, Part 3 will follow later. She starts with adding a Databricks environment with a Workspace and a Cluster. In Part 2 she goes more in-depth with uploading data to Azure Data Lake Store, clean the data with Scala and use R to visualize it and do predictive analytics. In Part 3 Leila will show the result in Power BI.

That concludes this edition of Bits of BI, feel free to share it with others!
@NickyvV

Bits of BI – June 15

In accordance with Thomas LaRock I decided to also start my round-up of news from around the block of SQL Server, Technology or anything vaguely related to BI. And I might include some other things as well if I feel like it.
My plan is to do a weekly round-up, let’s see how that works out.
My latest post was 2 weeks ago, but here’s a new one! As we’re starting to go into summer and holidays, I might skip one edition in August also.

So here’s the second edition of Bits of BI!

• 24 Hours of PASS: Summit Preview 2018 was held on June 12 and 13.
  24 1-hour sessions on Performance Tuning, Azure Data Lake, Digital Storytelling, Advanced R, Power BI and more. The recordings will be posted on the Learning Center.
• New Stack Overflow Public Database Available (2018-06) by Brent Ozar (@BrentO)
  There is a new (and bigger) version of the Stack Overflow database available for export which you can use to play with, tune queries or do demo’s on.
• Use Outlook Shortcuts to organize your favorite Power BI Reports and Dashboards by Chris Finlan (@cmfinlan)
• Advice from a tech Mom on getting teens to learn to code by Jen Stirrup (@jenstirrup)

That concludes this edition of Bits of BI, feel free to share it with others!
@NickyvV

Bits of BI – June 6

In accordance with Thomas LaRock I decided to also start my round-up of news from around the block of SQL Server, Technology or anything vaguely related to BI. And I might include some other things as well if I feel like it.

My plan is to do a weekly round-up, let’s see how that works out.

So here’s the first edition of Bits of BI!

• Query Folding in Power BI
• Power BI Desktop June Feature Summary
• Subscribe others to email subscriptions in Power BI
• Microsoft + Github = Empowering Developers
• Announcing: The SQL Server Execution Plan Reference

I hope you found this edition of Bits of BI useful, feel free to share it with others!

@NickyvV

My Data & BI Summit Recap

I finally came around to writing a wrap-up for the Data & BI Summit in Dublin last month.
No fancy pictures or colors, just a to-the-point summary.

New features

• Incremental refresh – Premium (included in May update as preview feature)
• Drillthrough with current filters and parameters (included in May update)
• Common Data Service For Analytics (preview live)
• Theme file additions coming soon:
• Theme export
• Background added to themes
• Table/matrix headers
• Persistent filters (per user) in the service
• Buttons to trigger action (included in May update)
• Q&A and linguistics
• App workspaces without Office365 group

Modelling

• Optimize your model (size)
• Make use of Query folding in Power Query
• Applies to Import mode only
• Filter first, Transform later
• Use supported transformations first, non-folding steps at the end
• Writing a SQL query in Get Data prevents folding
• Create a blank query with #shared to show a document library of all M functions (Blog)

Visualization

• Choose a theme
• Report theme generator at PowerBI.tips
• Color Theme Creator at Aka.ms/pbitheme
• Outlining
• Canva.com
• PowerPoint
• PowerBI.tips
• Storytelling, with:
• Custom visuals (e.g. Timeline Storyteller)
• Bookmarks
• Tooltip pages
• PowerApps visual
• Drillthrough
• Syncing slicers

Governance

• Use App Workspaces for DTAP
• DEV_Finance
• UAT_Finance
• Finance
• Use Onedrive for Business for versioning your pbix-files, with the same folders as the App Workspace
• Use the API’s with PowerShell to copy resources between workspaces
• Chriss Webb (@cwebb_bi) wrote a successful script in response to a video from Adam Saxton (@GuyInACube)

Best practices and notes

Visualization | Model

• Driving table for measures
• Hide unused columns
• Totals in matrix and tables insensitive to row filters
• Uniform naming of measures and calculations
• Sync slicers
• Add descriptions where possible
• Make sure filters are not hardcoded

Governance

• Add an about page with last refresh date time and description of Model
• Version the Model
• Schedule datasets using Admin account for one place to monitor failure notification emails
• Use one drive as source control
• Golden dataset

Further reading

• Power BI Whitepapers
• PowerBI.tips
• Power BI User Voice

@NickyvV

Data & BI Summit Day 1 Keynote

The kick-off is by Rose Spitzer (@RoseSpitzer), General Manager of the Power BI User Group.

John Doyle Sr. Director Product marketing

Video: Heathrow Airport showcase

Ben Watt

Park run: Every saturday a 5K run
It started out small but now has 1427 different places and over 34 million people participating!

Amanda Cofsky (@MissAmandaN) Power BI Program Manager

She starts her story with a New York taxi demo and shows some interesting new features to come:

• Incremental refresh (Premium users only)
• Drillthrough with filters and parameters (this will be released in May!)

Q&A explorer

John Doyle enters the stage again and talks about the roadmap for 6-9 months

Some interesting things coming! #PowerBI #DataAnalytics #DataBISummit @pbiusergroup pic.twitter.com/fUBnP4yiAq

— Gavin Clark (@gavinclark66) 24 april 2018

Colin Murphy

Colin starts another set of demos, starting with the Common Data Service for Analytics (CDSA)

Public preview of #PowerBI #CommonDataService coming soon!! #DataBISummit pic.twitter.com/x75t23aeaT

— Joël CREST #DataBISummit (@JoelCrest) 24 april 2018

Show details for table data under the graphs

Show details in #PowerBI reports.. #DataBISummit pic.twitter.com/tBGuGVjWOx

— Wolfgang Strasser (@wstrasser) 24 april 2018

Datapools (preview): Entities from CDS
Datapools are also available as a Power BI connector in Power BI Desktop.
You can add entities from different data sources.
Use case: Combine promotional data with CRM using Power Query online

Drill-throughs will now take all the filters/context from the page you’re on (not just the point you drilled into!), there’s a ‘show details’ feature and data pools (Common Data service for Analytics) is coming soon and going to rock the world of #analytics #DataBISummit pic.twitter.com/KLlQmwqoS2

— Rishi Sapra (@rsaprano) April 24, 2018

Data & BI Summit

I have quite some good news: in April I’m going to the Data & BI Summit in Dublin, Ireland.
The Data & BI Summit is hosted by The Power BI User Group.
With tracks like Visualise, Model, Govern and Develop there’s content for a wide range of people, from Business analysts to IT admins.

I’m particularly interested in the Microsoft Power Series where members of the so-called “Power BI dream team” will give 2,5 hour long deep dive sessions on topics like Security, Story Telling and Advanced Data Visualisation with Power BI.
What can we expect at the summit? From the website:

• Exceptional, quality content: Learn how to bring your company through the digital transformation by gaining new understandings of your data and deepening your knowledge of the Microsoft Business Intelligence tools. Products will include: Power BI, PowerApps, Flow, SQL Server, Excel, Azure, D365 and more! 
• Answers to your questions: Network with the Microsoft Power BI team, dig-in onsite to find immediate answers with industry experts, Data MVPs, and User Group Leaders while taking advantage of the opportunity to engage in interactive sessions, workshops and labs.
• Network with your peers: Enjoy countless opportunities to create lasting relationships by connecting and networking with user group peers, partners and Microsoft team members.
• Stretch your skill set: Advance your career by learning the latest updates and how they can help you and your business.

If you’re also going, let me know in the comments or on Twitter, I hope to see you there!

@NickyvV

SSDT Error Message: Unable To Cast COM Object of Type 'X' To Interface Type 'Y'

Just a short blog post today explaining a problem (and solution) I ran into when working at a client a while ago. Hopefully it is helpful for anyone.

Problem

I got this error message at a client when I tried to open an SSIS solution in SSDT:

Unable to cast COM object of type 'System.__ComObject' to interface type 'Microsoft.SqlServer.Dts.Pipeline.Wrapper.IDTSObject100'

According to this source the reason could be a badly applied Service Pack or CU for example, but I’m not entirely sure about that in my case.

Solution

The solution for this is to reregister the dll that is referred to, in this case: dts.dll.
Before starting, make sure you close any open Visual Studio instance.
In a Command Prompt go to the following path (be sure to start the Command Prompt as Administrator):

C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\120\DTS\Binn\

where 120 is you SQL Server version number.
Reregister the dts.dll by executing the command:

regsvr32 dts.dll

If all goes well you should see the following message pop up:

I found info here.

Happy coding :)

@NickyvV