Power BI is an excellent tool for departments or small organisations getting started with their BI solution. Unless some time is spent organising the solution, however, it can become cluttered. In this article, Gogula Aryalingam explains how to streamline the solution to keep it organized and efficient. … Read more
The JSON documents that are part of Cosmos DB document collections can be complex with arrays and nesting. In this article, Adam Aspin shows you how to query them with SQL.… Read more
The use of macOS by developers and IT professionals has gained popularity the past few years. Running a sandboxed SQL Server, however, has been difficult. That changed when Microsoft made SQL Server images on Docker available. In this article, Carlos Robles explains how to get started with Docker when running macOS. … Read more
Testing is a challenging yet crucial part of software development, but how do you know that a test is telling you what you need to know? In this article, Michael Sorens explores the concept of phantom tests that return correct results but don’t actually prove anything.… Read more
A good day for a database administrator (DBA) is a lot like a good airline flight. A lot of excitement in either situation is bad. In a perfect world, a DBA will be productive and not spending most of their time “putting out fires.” (And fires are never a good idea on a flight!) DBAs … Read more
Gogula Aryalingam continues telling the story of the BI solution created by a business analyst intern. In this article, after the initial success, plans are made to sustain and grow the project.… Read more
Learning programming logic and syntax is just the beginning. In this article, David Njoku talks about how to debug and troubleshoot errors as a new developer.… Read more
Today I got a bit closer to a meaningful definition of automation as it applies to the software development process. I’ve been turning this concept over in my head for a while, which is partly related to the dreaded question of licensing. Why should licensing an automation product be related to the number of users? … Read more
There are many options today when it comes to developing applications. In this article, Julio Sampaio demonstrates how to create an application built on top of AngularJS with an ASP.NET API as the the back-end process.… Read more
There are many options to consider when managing the settings and configuration for ASP.NET Core applications. In this article, Dino Esposito explains the most common scenarios for configuration of these applications.… Read more
SQL Server contains many built-in views and functions that can be used to understand what is going on “under the hood,” and security is no exception. In this article, Robert Sheldon explains the security related catalogue views, dynamic management views, and system functions.… Read more
Cosmos DB is Microsoft’s highly scalable, NoSQL database platform running in Azure. It supports four API models, including Key-Value pair and Documents. Pushpa Sekhara provides an overview of Cosmos DB, including some best practices to improve performance.… Read more
If you are a Star Trek fan, you’ve seen the future of medicine, or at least how the writers imagine it will be. Painless, needleless injections are given by hypospray devices, right through clothing with no chance of cross-contamination. The medical tricorder provides an accurate diagnosis in seconds. Broken bones, illnesses, and injuries are quickly … Read more
In the previous article of this series, Andy Brown of Wise Owl Training explained how to use the oh-so-important CALCULATE function in DAX to make changes to the default filter context within a formula. This article shows how you can use the FILTER function to do something similar and explains the differences between the two approaches. … Read more
The Matrix is one of the many built-in visualizations found in Power BI. While the Matrix is easy to populate, filtering it is not so straightforward. In this article, Dennes Torres explains how to add a slicer that does the job.… Read more
A BI project should return value to the company quickly, not only after months or even years of work. In this article by Gogula Aryalingam, Ruthie, the intern, determines which items from her manager's requirements she can complete before the big meeting. She continues working on her semantic model by including a Date table, the star schema, measures, formatting, and more.… Read more
Data analytics has become one of the powerful domains in the world of data science. An enormous amount of data is being generated by each organization in every sector. Computer science has found solutions to store and process this data in a smart way through a distributed file system. One such example is Azure Data Lake. It uses the Hadoop Distributed File System, and to perform analytics on this data, Azure Data Lake storage is integrated with Azure Data Analytics Service and HDInsight. In this article, Suhas Pande will explain how to store data using Azure Data Lake and how to perform data analysis on it using U-SQL, a big data SQL and C# language. … Read more
While architecting cloud native applications, you need to ensure that your system is highly available, performant, scalable, fault tolerant, and has the capability to recover from a disaster scenario. In this article, Samir Behara discusses the options available when designing the database architecture to achieve scalability.… Read more
SQL Server Reporting Services has changed quite a bit since it was introduced in 2004. Despite new analytic services like Power BI, SSRS is still a popular tool for paginated reports. In this article, Kathi Kellenberger explains the architecture of SSRS and walks you through installing an SSRS development environment on your workstation or laptop.… Read more
If you have worked with databases long enough, you probably have many frightening stories to tell about things that have gone awry on the job or problems that were difficult to solve. Accidently dropping a table or trying to fix an issue with the CIO standing right in your cube, repeatedly asking if you’ve fixed … Read more
Compliant Database DevOps
