I was re-entering my password into our NowTV box in the bedroom when it occurred to me. Authentication sucks on the Internet of Things (IoT). The problem is you have a simple device with minimal extras. On the NowTV you have a basic remote that looks like this: Can you imagine entering a password with a length of over 20 that’s a mixture of numbers, special characters and both upper and lower case characters?...
Distribution list are amazing things, they allow us to send mail to our team without having to remember who exactly is in our team, this is especial true in this modern age where we are part of many different teams, sometimes without even realising. These lists can contain hundreds or even thousands of members and the latest NHS IT bug has left IT departments maybe wanting to double-check their distribution lists – hopefully before the security team comes a knocking....
This is absolutely amazing, Microsoft, running SQL Server, in Linux Redhat (RHEL)!
One of the annoying things about working with multiple languages is they each have their differences – obviously, otherwise there would only be 1 language! Although there is good reason to have these differences they still have elements that are a pain. One of the most annoying things, other then “do you require a semicolon at the end of the statement?” is comments. Comments aren’t executed or complied but they help developers read code....
Cut-down version, I’m not working with SIMS anymore and I can’t pass on my work without them getting a large bill from Capita for using the business objects. Years and years ago I was working on a SIMS help desk at a Local Authority (LA). I had a school log a call asking about importing email addresses. Like many schools this school had just purchased a messaging service that allows sending emails and texts, the problem was they needed them in SIMS ....
With rise of the internet high street businesses are rushing to adapt so they don’t become a thing of the past. However in their rush are they being a storm trooper? Are they missing the point? First, lets look at two successful hybrid business. Hughes, a electrical store based in East Anglia and Argos, a British catalogue retailer operating in the United Kingdom. If we focus on Argos as its more well known business....
So one of the really nice sponsors at SQL Saturday had a vending machine that was rigged up to release a treat when you sent a tweet. Like so I'm at #sqlsatcambridge home of @redgate #redgatetreat #red668 — Matt Smith (@matt40k) September 10, 2016 and give you… In mine had a SQL Prompt license. At first I was a bit disappointed, I hoping for SQL Test license or a full blown SQL toolbelt but the more I’ve been using it, the more I’m loving it....
https://twitter.com/matt40k/710468378050339000 It’s nice to see Microsoft fixing old bugs – the I noticed today they updated the MSDN article about Actions in Multidimensional Models. It now supports HTTPS! Woot!! https://connect.microsoft.com/SQLServer/feedback/details/692837/cannot-specify-https-in-an-analysis-services-report-action
Unfortunately this year I’ve not been able to make any of the pre-cons, however the (free) community day looks epic – the hardest part is going to be selecting which session to attend, the final one looking the worst. Aghhh!!! I’m going to have to roll a dice or something! CDC – Change Data Capture in Detail Uwe Ricken What’s new in the SQL Server 2016 for a BI Professional...
Today one of our older SSIS packages failed which loads data into our warehouse, it turns out one of the fields had been expanded as the business had started to use a different standard for one of the codes. Despite not being told about this, it causing it fail and generate extra work on an already busy Monday it was actually a really good thing. Firstly, once we identified the problem (and fixed it), our main business contact was aware of it, was able to explain why it was happening....
A while ago I got a new laptop at work with Windows 10 Enterprise and for a while I just kept using my old Windows 7 Enterprise laptop for bits I hadn’t yet transferred over. The last thing on the list was AD tools. This should just be a question of installing Remote Server Administration Tools for Windows 10 (KB2693643). Unfortunately Remote Server Administration Tools for Windows 10 is available only in English (United States) for this release....
The only thing you search for on Bing is Google. Microsoft has for a long time been in the search engine business with numerous rebranding exercises – MSN Search (1998 – 2006), Windows Live Search (2006 – 2007) then Live Search (2007 – 2009) and finally Bing (2009 – present). Despite all the time and money Microsoft has poured into its search engine Google still has 3 times the number of of the search engine market share as Bing....
Yesterday I went to investigate a problem someone had reported only to discover a butt load of releases As you can see, I have more releases then commits. A build was triggered by a commit, but this doesn’t explain why. I tried switching it up so it only builds when you put [build] in the commit message – which resulted in having to commit the yaml file as the feature isn’t available via the web interface, it does make sense to have this under version control....
Over the summer holidays I got my son to create a spreadsheet detailing some of his toy cars which we then imported into PowerBI. Created by a 7 year old in under an hour
Updated 10/10/2016 – Added Map using the new Shapes option in PowerBI. Every School in England regularly publish data to the Department of Education and Graham Reed has published a spreadsheet of the software each school used to submit their returns. Below is a PowerBI report I’ve created based on his data. You can also access by clicking here
So yesterday I was playing with PowerBI and I hit a problem. As you can see, the x-axis is wrong. For some reason it wasn’t creating the correct range. After a little while I thought I’d try out Microsoft’s feedback option – the smiley faces – in the top menu you have a smiley face. Click it, then you can send feedback. Sure enough after a little while, Justin Schneider from the Power BI team replied asking a few more questions – basically asking me to check the data was correct, which was in this case and even offered a solution....
Back in SQL Server 2008 Microsoft introduced auditing, specifically the Database Audit Specification. It’s pretty good – despite the title I do actually think its nice feature, it pretty much works and doesn’t have much of a performance impact, my problem is not much love has gone into it since it was released in SQL2008. It claims to meet various regulations such as the EU data Protection Directive, HIPAA, PCI DSS and to be fair, I’m sure it does....
One of the annoy parts of building a warehouse is building the staging database, its an important first step. The staging database is replica of the source systems. BIML can provide away to accelerate this process, however its not perfect. BIML is designed to create SSIS packages – and it does this very, very, well. SQL database objects, not so well. SSDT does this well. The first step in the designing a warehouse is discovery, Azure Data Catalog is an excellent tool for doing the discovery, it allows you to connect to a wide array of data source types and gather the meta data that can be used to build the staging database....
Below is a list of useful BI links http://www.kimballgroup.com/ https://gqbi.wordpress.com/ https://bipassion.wordpress.com/ https://blog.crossjoin.co.uk/
The Power Query Formula Language (informally known as “M”) is a powerful mashup query language optimized for building queries that mashup data. It is a functional, case sensitive language similar to F#, which can be used with Power Query in Excel and Power BI Desktop. A few days ago I got asked to produce a list of users (and their email address) in a number of AD Groups. I already had a SSIS package that had a script task to pull this data from Active Directory and push it into a SQL database and we have a PowerShell script to get the same data in our code repo....
This might sound pretty pointless and silly but when talking about a 20 working day SLA a day can mean alot between a massive fine or compliance. During one of my driving lessons with Gary we were talking about his recent streak of passes. The conversation then lead on to pass rates and us wondering how this broken down – for example, by gender, ethnicity, age, driving instructor type (intense driving school \ chain \ individual driving instructor \ family etc)....
Today my colleague had a problem opening our BI solution, the solution had multiple projects, including 3 SSDT projects. Although the project builds correctly on both my machine, the build machine and another colleague machine it refused to build stating that the reference to the object in another project was invalid. After thinking for a few moments, I remembered I had seem this before. The problem was a bug in SSDT....
Microsoft has released SQL Server 2016 Developer, for free. That’s right, zero, zip, nothing. Completely free. The developer edition is fully featured, it contains the same goodness as the $$$ Enterprise edition. The catch? Its not for production.
Another day, another reference to an old Jamie Thomson blog post – today it was getting the ConnectionString to output to the information. Admittedly I wasn’t looking for how to fire the connection string into an information event, just the ConnectionString, still another great idea and its useful for debugging.
This month saw the release of SQL Server 2016, which from a BI\Report point of view is huge. Once we had access to it yeah, already been on msdn. Can't believe we're being made to wait!!! — Dave Kerby (@davekerby) June 1, 2016 I spotted something odd. So whats the diff? Enterprise is only core licensed - https://t.co/2NgZG7siUD #sqlhelp @sqlserver @SQLServerBI pic.twitter.com/SP8OC5eLvD — Matt Smith (@matt40k) June 6, 2016 Now, in SQL Server terms there are two types of licensing...