Book Review: Expert Data Modeling with Power BI

Somewhere last year I started reading this book on Power BI. It actually took me quite a while to finish it, because of [reasons]. 😀
But now that I finally finished it, I thought it would be good to write a short review on my thougths about the book, so you know if it is worth your time and money.

The book is from fellow-MVP Soheil Bakhshi (@biinsightnz | B) called Expert Data Modeling with Power BI. 

TL;DR

Yes, it is definitely worth it! 😁

The long version

I think the combination of good, practical examples and in-depth coverage of (Power BI) features is the best about this book. You can also follow along with the step-by-step examples, as I think going hands-on is the best way of learning things. With reading you can only pick up so much knowledge, while putting it in practice right away enriches the learning experience much more.

Next to that, the book is also filled with best practices for data preparation as well as data modeling.

Soheil is not afraid of touching upon and explaining more advanced and complex topics, like:

• Incremental refresh
• Calculation groups
• Aggregations
• The new composite models
• Slowly changing dimensions

One point of critique if you will: sometimes I felt that adding color to an image in the book, could get the message across better. But I also get that this makes the pages more crowded, and probably also more expensive, and is not the way Packt publishes their books 😀

All in all I very much enjoyed reading this book! And I definitely learned a lot.
I think I knew, or at least have heard of, all the features that were explained in the book. But if you've never used/implemented RLS you don't really know what you're up against. The same goes for aggregations or calculation groups for example. So reading up on those features with good examples has definitely enriched my knowledge.

I've already started reading my next book, so stay tuned for another review!

Book Review: The War of Art by Steven Pressfield

My Reading Journey

A while ago I created a new page on my blog: My Reading Journey. On this page I’m keeping track of the books I read throughout the year. There are around a dozen books on it that I read in previous years. Starting this year, and maybe I’ll cover a few other books I already read, I’m going to do a short review of the books. Or at least the ones that are related to my professional career.

I recently completed reading The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles by Steven Pressfield.

My 3-word summary: Beating resistance & procrastination

Theme

The War of Art tries to help readers overcome Resistance. It comes in many flavors as you can see in the mind map I created. The author gives various ways of beating through this resistance and ultimately getting things done.

Opinion

I really liked the book, especially the first two parts of the book where resistance is explained and what I can do to beat resistance and turn into a pro. I think I already am a pro… in procrastination. I have to be honest and admit that many of the properties of resistance where quite familiar to me.
Since I started planning my daily activities a bit more I see I can be much more productive. Also focus on finishing one task at a time. Just set out what you want to achieve for the day and work towards that with priorities. You can use the Pomodoro technique if that works for you, I use Pomodairo for that. But the point is: just use anything that makes you more productive, whether it’s a tool, a framework or just common sense.

In the third part the author gives his opinion as to what he believes is the reason that I can overcome my fears.At some points he lost me a little bit, just because I don’t think there’s anything “in a higher realm”.

Author

Steven Pressfield also wrote Do the Work and Turning Pro, similar books to this, all centered around the topics of resistance, prioritization, creativity and empowerment, although this was his first nonfiction book. He wrote quite a few novels before this one (e.g. The Legend of Bagger Vance was adapted for screen, starring Matt Damon, Will Smith and Charlize Theron a.o.).
The title is not to be confused with The Art of War, written by Sun Tzu in the 6th century BC which is said by many to be the decisive work on military strategies and tactics of its time.

Book Review: Reporting with Microsoft SQL Server 2012

I have just finished reading this book (Reporting with Microsoft SQL Server 2012) and wanted to let you know my opinion.

I believe the book is a very good starting point for beginners in SSRS or Power View. I also got some gotcha's out of it, so there may be interesting points for more experienced users.

Overall I feel the content described is correct (some minor typos aside), thorough and easy to read, but it is on a pretty basic level. So if you have (almost) never worked with Reporting Services I believe it is worthwhile reading the chapters on SSRS, but if you're already a(n) (more) experienced user, I don't believe this will add very much to your knowledge.

While chapter 2 also covers new features in SQL 2012 (like data alerts) and could therefore be of use for experienced users, chapter 3 will not cover many new things in my opinion.

Because Power View is a much younger product than SSRS, this book might also be a good starting point. It covers the differences between SharePoint and Excel as a starting point for a Power View report very well. It also let's you create a basic report and publish this to SharePoint.

All in all a good and easy read on the subject.