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

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

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.

My Reading Goal Journey

I created a page over here to keep track of all the books I read.

Before I start off this post I have to mention Adam Saxton (b | t), also known as Guy in a Cube, because this post, and the idea of setting a goal for reading was inspired by his post and video a few weeks back. If you don't know who Adam is, check out his blog on guyinacube.com or one of his video's on his Youtube channel.
In his post, Adam talks about his reading journey, and that he wants to get some regular reading done.

As I have followed business leaders and entrepreneurs, a common theme has come up. They all read regularly, and a lot!

Fast(er) reading
As Adam states in his post that he's a slow reader, I'm also not one of the fastest readers myself. I did start out with some (fast) reading techniques on lifehacking.nl earlier this year which already helped me in reading a little bit faster. The site is in Dutch, but you can probably find similar sources in English or translate it.
I'm currently at the stage of reading at 90 bpm and 2-3 stops per line. At that speed I can notice I stop the subvocalization (inner speech), which is a big part of slowing readers down. Sometimes it's hard to keep following the rules of speed reading, I'm having a hard time with regression (looking back in the text). So this reading goal is a good place to keep practicing those things and progressing even further.

My goal
For my goal to be SMART, I'm going to start out small and set my goal to 25 pages a day for 100 days, that will take me to October 11th, because I already started last Monday.




My Reading Journey
As time passes, I will keep you posted on how my journey progresses and update this post with new books I complete.

Updated on February 3rd, 2017
I created a new page called My Reading Journey where I'm keeping track of my progress.

Suggested reading for August 14, 2014

After some months of being busy with my son / other things / holiday / writers block / other excuses.. I thought I'd start my blog with some useful links.

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

• 52 Types of Blog Posts brought to my attention by Brent Ozar's (B|T) blog post on Speakers: Here's How to Improve Your Session
• How to ask questions politely and correctly by Paul Randal (B|T)
• Announcing SQL Server Radio by Matan Yungman (B|T)
• The 24 Hours of Pass Summit Preview edition is scheduled for September 9th 12:00 UTC
• TSQL2sDay #57 (SQL Family and Community) was hosted by Jeffrey Verheul (B|T)
• Spent an hour reading this interview with Edward Snowden on Wired

Hopefully you can get something useful out of here!

@NickyvV

Suggested reading

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

• FAQ about TEMPDB by Brent Ozar (B|T)
• What Developers Need to Know About SQL Server by Brent Ozar (B|T)
• Explanation of SQL Server IO and Latches by Derek Colley (T)
• A great SQLFamily talk by Jen Stirrup (B|T): Women in Technology: Children at Technical Conferences 
• Times are changing for Koen Verbeeck (B|T)

SQLRally Nordic and Amsterdam will be held next week, I believe you can still register.

I will be attending SQLRally Amsterdam, so I hope to see some of you over there!

Hopefully you can get somehting useful out of here!

@NickyvV

Suggested Reading

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

• Ultimate Query Tuning by @Rob_Farley
• Incorrect Results Caused by Adding an Index by @SQL_Kiwi
  You can vote for the Connect item here.
• Interested in Power BI? @Technitrain Summed it all up!
• Dump The Results Of A DAX Query To CSV Using Powershell by @Kjonge
• @MarcoRus started a great discussion about advanced BI certifications like SSAS Maestro, MCA:BI, MCM:BI. Check it here.
• Last but not least: Excel 2013 Standalone will NOT add Power Pivot / Power View until September 10, 2013. You can check the SQL Server Forum for more information.

Hopefully you can get somehting useful out of here!

@NickyvV

Suggested Reading

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

• SQL Server Problem Solving Methodology by @grrl_geek
• Counting Things That Didn't Happen by @PowerPivotPro
• New to SSRS? Build Your First SQL Server Reporting Services Report by @grrl_geek
• More advanced with SSRS? @sqlJason does a great job explaining Bullet Graphs in SSRS: Part 1 and Part 2. Part 3 will follow shortly to complete the series
• In case you haven't heard of Power BI by this time, check out this post by @Technitrain, it sums it all up pretty well
• For those who love to write blog posts, but can't seem to find the time should check out Speedblogging

Hopefully you can get somehting useful out of here!

You can also follow me on Twitter: @NickyvV

Suggested reading

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

• How to communicate effectively in business by @SQLRockstar 
• PowerPivot vs Power View: Whats The Difference? by @PowerPivotPro
• The Index Your Queries will Never Request (A Clustered Index!) by @kendra_little
• The BI Survey 13 is now open, you can take it here

Hopefully you can get somehting useful out of the links!

You can also follow me on Twitter: @NickyvV

Suggested reading

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

• Why won't my PowerPivot for Excel 2010 workbook upgrade to Excel 2013?
• The sessions and speakers for PASS Summit 2013 have been announced, check it out here!
• Firestorm: The story of the bushfire at Dunalley: A so-called "Interactive" by The Guardian
• PowerPivot: Relationship may be needed but I already have one?! by @PowerPivotPro
• SQLServerCentral Runs sp_Blitz - Query Plans
• A Sample SSRS Dashboard and some Tips & Tricks by @SQLJason

Hopefully you can get somehting useful out of the links!

You can also follow me on Twitter: @NickyvV

Suggested reading

I came across some nice articles and blog posts this week I wanted to share:

• The (unintended) network effect of Excel by @PowerPivotPro
• Junior DBA interview questions by @SQLRockstar
• Comments and descriptions in DAX by @TechniTrain
• How far can you push tabular? by @MarcoRus
• The emergence of Silicon Valley (documentary) by @AlexanderNL (+Alexander Klöpping)

Hopefully you can get somehting useful (or funny) out of the articles!

You can also follow me on Twitter: @NickyvV