BI

External Article

Using Calendars and Dates in Power BI

  • Article

You can use a host of time-intelligence functions in DAX to calculate everything from simple year-to-date totals to moving averages and average opening and closing balances. In this article, Andy Brown shows how to model various scenarios with calendars and dates, and how to get around some of the issues you may encounter.

2020-01-20

External Article

Cracking DAX – the EARLIER and RANKX Functions

  • Article

So far in this series, Andy Brown of Wise Owl Training has shed light on functions like CALCULATE, VALUES and FILTER, but it’s only when you understand the idiosyncrasies of the EARLIER function that you can claim to have genuinely cracked DAX. This article gives four examples of the use of this peculiar function, in the process explaining why it has such a misleading name. Using the EARLIER function properly all boils down (as is so often the case with DAX) to understanding row and filter context. The article also shows how to use the RANKX function to sort data into your required order.

2019-08-26

External Article

Streamlining a Power BI Solution

  • Article

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.

2019-05-27

Technical Article

Reporting Services Basics: Overview and Installation

  • DatabaseWeekly

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.

2019-05-22

External Article

The BI Journey: The Expert’s Advice – Part 2

  • Article

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.

2019-05-06

Blogs

Learn Better: Pause to Review More

By

If you want to learn better, pause more in your learning to intentionally review.

Azure SQL Managed Instance Next-Gen: Bring on the IOPS

By

If you’ve used Azure SQL Managed Instance General Purpose, you know the drill: to...

SQL, MDX, DAX – the languages of data

By

Ramblings of a retired data architect Let me start by saying that I have...

Read the latest Blogs

Forums

Two foreign keys to the same table. Can't cascade deletes.

By FunkyDexter

Not sure if this is really a relational theory question but it seems about...

Connecting Power BI to SSAS and effective user not working

By Paul Hernández

Hi everyone, Below is a consolidated summary of what we validated Architecture & data...

High Availability setup - has anyone seen this method?

By Paul Lancaster

Hi all, I recently moved to a new employer who have their HA setup...

Visit the forum

Question of the Day

Encoding URLs

I have this data in a SQL Server 2025 table:

CREATE TABLE Response
( ResponseID INT NOT NULL CONSTRAINT ResponsePK PRIMARY KEY
, ResponseVal VARBINARY(5000)
)
GO
If I want to get a value from this table that I can add to a URL in a browser, which of these code items produces a result I can use?

See possible answers