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

Suggested Reading for October 20, 2017

I came across some nice articles and blog posts in the past weeks I wanted to share:

• Loading Data using R and PowerBI by Nick Burns at SQLServerCentral
  Nick explains why he isn't a fan of Power BI's R visuals. But the alternative is loading data via an R script and display it in a native Power BI visual. I specially liked his neat technique of unpivoting data with R to end up with a key-value pair. This gives him the possibility to easily slice the final scatterplot by the keys of the key-value pair, which were the attributes (columns) in the original data set before the unpivot action.
• Configuring “all” access with dynamic row-level security by Daniil Maslyuk (@DMaslyuk | xxlbi.com)
  Daniil has a nice solution for solving a problem with dynamic RLS for a security table with 2 attributes, e.g. Department and Region where several users have "ALL" configured for 1 or 2 attributes. For example, the CEO can see all departments and regions, but the CFO can see all regions but only the Finance department. He introduces an unrelated UserSecurity table and filters the facts and dimensions by this table.
• Epic Life Quest Task: Setting the Summit Pre-Con Attendance Record by Brent Ozar (@BrentO | Ozar.me)
  Brent and Erik put themselves to the test and passed gloriously: they sold out all the 360 seats in their pre-con. Brent gives a look behind the scenes how they pulled it off and what they did to get it sold out: write a blog post, online presentation, email announcements and give more value to the attendees with stretch goals.
• A Freecon Halloween at the PASS Summit at SQLServerCentral
  If you aren't attending any of the pre-cons for Pass Summit you can go to this FreeCon. It's held on Tuesday, October 31st, with 6 sessions from different speakers: Jason Brimhall (@sqlrnnr), Louis Davidson (@drsql), Andy Leonard (@AndyLeonard), Jimmy May (@aspiringgeek), Gail Shaw (@SQLintheWild) and Wayne Sheffield (@DBAWayne), an impressive lineup I'd say. Among the topics: SSIS Framework, SQL Injection and Parameter Sniffing. You can register here.
• Power BI Pro & Power BI Premium by Adam Wilson (@AdamDWilson) at PowerBI.com
  Adam, Group Program Manager Power BI, has put together a list of the most common questions they heard from customers to provide guidance that can help as a starting point when assessing licensing options.
• Book Release: Voices from the Data Platform by Melody Zacharias (@sqlmelody | sqlmelody.com)
  7 very talented people from the SQLFamily got together and wrote this book as a start of a series of books: Melody Zacharias (@sqlmelody), Cathrine Wilhelmsen (@cathrinew), Jennifer McCown (@JenniferMcCown), Mindy Curnutt (@sqlgirl), Rie Irish (@IrishSQL), Kathi Kellenberger (@auntkathi) and Meagan Longoria (@mmarie), with a foreword by Kevin Kline (@kekline). You can get the book on Amazon.

• The purpose of this series is to help others succeed.  The authors have all ridden the elevator of success to the top and received their MVP awards to reflect that fact.  Now it is our responsibility to send that elevator back down so others may benefit from our experience.  As an indication of our intent, all profits from the sale of this book are to be donated to charities.

I hope you can get something useful out of here, feel free to let me know if you find other useful links that I should include next time!

@NickyvV