Deciding when to do a differential backup 02 May 2017 Nico-Jacobs SQL Server SQL Server allows for differential backups, which only backups extends modified since the last full backup. The advantage of these differential backups is that if only a small portion of your data has changed since the last full backup, you need less time and storage for your backups! The disadvanta... [More]
Using Azure VMs as remote R workspaces in R Tools for Visual Studio 02 March 2017 Nico-Jacobs R, Visual Studio Running R on your local laptop is easy: you just download one of the R distributions (CRAN or Microsoft) and kick off RGui.exe. But if you’re a Microsoft oriented developer or data scientist you are probably familiar with Visual Studio. So you download and install R Tools for Visual Studio (RTVS) an... [More]
Creating histograms in Power BI was never easier 21 November 2016 Nico-Jacobs Power BI Power BI Desktop contains since the October 2016 release a binning option (under the group option). With this option it becomes super-easy to create a histogram. Let’s demonstrate: First assume you made a data model containing the DimProduct and the FactInternetSales table of the AdventureworksDW sa... [More]
Weird localization problem in DAX editor 17 September 2014 Nico-Jacobs Business Intelligence, Excel, Power BI, SQL Server BI One of my students (thanks, Stefan!) discovered during the PowerBI course a bizarre localization issue in the DAX editor of Excel and SQL Server Data Tools, which is easy to replicate: Install Office 2013 or SQL Server data tools on a machine with a locale which uses a comma as decimal separator (I... [More]
Excel Power Query supports Multi-value Lookup columns in SharePoint lists 15 September 2014 Nico-Jacobs Business Intelligence, Excel, Power BI Power Query is a handy tool to load all sorts of data in Excel or PowerBI. One of the supported data types is SharePoint lists. But Power Query does more than the straight-forward loading of data in a single list. If a SharePoint list contains a lookup column referring to another list, Power Query w... [More]
Loading data in Azure Machine Learning 24 July 2014 Nico-Jacobs Azure, Business Intelligence, Data Mining, AzureML In July 2014 Microsoft made their cloud-based data mining environment (known as Azure Machine Learning, or AzureML) available to the public. With this platform users can analyze large amounts of data without the need to install and configure special software: A browser and a credit card is all you n... [More]
First Steps in Azure Machine Learning 15 July 2014 Nico-Jacobs Azure, Data Mining, SQL Server BI Today Microsoft announces the availability of machine learning (data mining) in Azure. As you can assume, you need an Azure account to get started with this, but there are free trial accounts… you can try before you buy. To get started with the machine learning preview go to http://manage.windowsaz... [More]
Building custom reports for SQL Server management 26 June 2014 Nico-Jacobs Business Intelligence, SQL Server, Reporting Services, Talks Recently I presented a session at the ITPROceed conference on ‘Administration intelligence’: using Business Intelligence solutions for analyzing log files, generate documentation, do disk quota estimations and other typical administration tasks. You can find the full presentation at SlideShare. In ... [More]
SQL Server 2014 In-memory OLTP (a.k.a Hekaton) @ Techorama 10 June 2014 Nico-Jacobs SQL Server, Talks A few days ago I presented a session on the In-Memory OLTP engine in SQL Server 2014 at Techorama, the Belgian developer conference. I talked about the good things In-Memory OLTP does, and the limitations it has. If you want to go through the slides and code examples again, feel free to download the... [More]
Loading GPX waypoints with Excel PowerQuery 02 June 2014 Nico-Jacobs Business Intelligence, Office, Power BI Plotting data on maps is becoming popular: We can use the geometry and geography data type in SQL Server, use the Reporting Services maps, Excel PowerView allows mapping coordinates on a map, and the recently released PowerMap plug-in in Excel offers beautiful visualizations of map data. But how ... [More]