BI

External Article

The BI Journey: The Expert’s Advice – Part 1

  • Article

Creating a quick dashboard with a few reports may be the beginning of a BI solution, but unless time is spent on the underlying model, it won't be adaptable enough to grow. In this article by Gogula Aryalingam, you'll see how the advice of a mentor helped a newbie understand how to create a flexible model that will lead to a valuable BI solution.

2019-03-11

2,975 reads

External Article

The BI Journey: The Analyst

  • Article

Most organizations today understand the value of analysing their data. In some cases, they haven’t realized the value or are just getting started. This article, by Data Platform MVP Gogula Aryalingam, describes how analytics can start small – with just one Power BI dashboard – and grow from there.

2019-02-21

3,439 reads

External Article

Reconciling Data Across Systems Using a Reconciliation Hub

  • Article

In many enterprises, where there are a number of separate systems engaged in processing data, there arises the daunting task of checking and reconciling data as it flows between systems. Discrepancies in data must be detected, tracked and corrected as quickly as possible: there is no room for error in doing this. A Reconciliation Hub can provide the answer, as Rahul Gupta explains.

2017-02-10

3,524 reads

External Article

Power BI for Data Modelling

  • Article

Power BI has a lot of uses, but one of the most interesting of them is to model and shape data to make it easier for self-service BI. Power BI is a full-stack solution that includes data loading, data modelling, metrics, reporting and distribution. It can take the source data, and perform in-process data modelling relatively easily as well a providing an easy to use and powerful user interface for analytics and reporting.

2016-11-07

4,912 reads

External Article

Direct Query with Power BI

  • Article

Power BI allows you to connect directly to the data just as if it were a “standard” connection, and modify and extend the data to support analytics. By using DirectQuery, you can build reports based on extremely large datasets where re-importing data not a practical solution. It also allows you to do data aggregations on the server. There are, of course, restrictions as well but it is nevertheless a worthwhile technique to use where appropriate. Adam Aspin explains all.

2016-09-13

4,392 reads

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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