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Wise Owl Blogs - Home (page 6 of 20)
Showing blogs 101-120 (out of 383)
How to pick out the first and last dates for a given group using DAX
Posted by Andy Brown on 06 October 2016
It's often challenging working out how to use DAX to solve specific problems. This blog shows how to produce a pivot table showing the first and last instances of any category.
How to use the FOR XML keywords in SQL to concatenate ids
Posted by Andy Brown on 27 September 2016
If you want to group items in a SQL query, showing a comma-delimited list of ids for each, generating an XML file is not the obvious place to start - but it should be.
How to get Excel to read out cell values on calculation
Posted by Andy Brown on 26 September 2016
A short blog explaining how you can get Excel to read out values in cells every time that you recalculate a worksheet.
How to post comments onto the Wise Owl website
Posted by Andy Brown on 09 September 2016
If you want to initiate (or take part in) a discussion on our website, you'll first need to create a post - and to do that, you'll need to register on our site. This blog explains how to do both these things!
Have you got any suggestions for future Wise Owl training courses?
Posted by Andy Brown on 09 September 2016
Please let us know if you can think of any training course that you think we should be offering, but which isn't in our current portfolio.
Which Power BI course should you take - Excel Power BI or Power BI Desktop?
Posted by Andy Brown on 22 July 2016
Microsoft are pursuing two separate BI lines at the moment: one for the Power BI tools which run within Excel, and another for the standalone application called Desktop Power BI. This blog attempts to explain the differences between two applications with such confusingly similar names!
Using Xamarin to develop mobile phone apps in Visual Studio
Posted by Andy Brown on 12 July 2016
With Visual Studio 2015 you can now develop for a wide range of mobile platforms, including IoS (Apple), Android and even the Apple Watch.
SQL Server 2016 contains lots of new goodies, as this blog explains
Posted by Andy Brown on 11 July 2016
Microsoft have made huge changes to SQL Server Reporting Services and Analysis Services (Tabular Model), and smaller ones to SSIS, SSAS (cubes) and SQL. This blog gives the main highlights, with links to blogs giving the full Monty for each area of SQL Server 2016.
An analysis of the main new features in SQL Server Reporting Services 2016
Posted by Andy Brown on 11 July 2016
Microsoft have put a lot of effort into SSRS 2016, including completely rewriting Report Manager (it's now called Web Portal) and creating separate software for publishing reports to mobiles. There are lots of new features to contemplate!
How to install Visual Studio 2015 Community and SQL Server 2016 Developer
Posted by Andy Brown on 11 July 2016
This short blog summarises how to get legitimate free copies of Visual Studio 2015 and SQL Server 2016 Developer installed on your laptop or computer.
This blog summarises the (many) new features in Analysis Services 2016 (Tabular)
Posted by Andy Brown on 08 July 2016
Microsoft have made lots of improvements to SSAS (Tabular model) - we particularly like the new DAX editor! This blog lists all of the most interesting changes, divided into 4 separate sections.
A quick summary of new features in Analysis Services multi-dimensional model
Posted by Andy Brown on 08 July 2016
What's new for cubes (or Analysis Services multi-dimensional models, to give them their full title)? Virtually nothing, as this oh-so-short blog makes clear.
A summary of the main new features in SQL Server Integration Services 2016
Posted by Andy Brown on 08 July 2016
My favourite new feature in SSIS 2016 is the ability to group components of a package together for reuse elsewhere, but there are quite a few more nice new ideas!
What's new in the T-SQL language for SQL Server 2016
Posted by Andy Brown on 23 June 2016
A quick summary of the (few) new language features introduced into SQL for SQL Server 2016.
A strange error when using Web Extensions to auto-compile SASS
Posted by Andy Brown on 19 May 2016
A short blog explaining a compile error I got using Web Extensions - here's hoping it saves someone else some time!
Using SSIS to loop over the worksheets in an Excel workbook, importing each
Posted by Andy Brown on 07 April 2016
Looping over Excel workbooks is one thing, but how can you loop over all of the worksheets in a single workbook, importing the contents of each? This blog explains the steps you need to follow.
Unpivoting data in SSIS using the Unpivot transformation
Posted by Andy Brown on 07 April 2016
If you've been given the output from a pivot table or a cube, you can collapse it back into its original state using the UNPIVOT transform in Integration Services.
In SSMS, how to add multiple aliases to tables using the ALT key
Posted by Andy Brown on 23 March 2016
It's only a small thing, but … this blog shows how you can click and drag with the ALT key held down, then type to apply a table alias to lots of tables simultaneously.
Creating an exchange rate slicer in PowerPivot
Posted by Andy Brown on 11 March 2016
A way to create a slicer in PowerPivot to choose which exchange rate to use (ie for which currency to show results).
How to use security roles to restrict access to your SSAS Tabular model
Posted by Andy Brown on 26 February 2016
Perspectives in Analysis Services let you show different parts of your tabular model to different people, but they don't have any security. To ensure that the right eyes see the right bits of your model, you'll need to create and manage security roles, as explained in this blog.