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Wise Owl blogs written in 2016 (page 1 of 3)
Showing blogs 1-20 (out of 52)
A summary of the Power BI Desktop Updates going back to November 2016
Posted by Andy Brown on 19 December 2016
This blog differs from the Microsoft update summary in two ways: it omits preview and obscure changes, but goes into more detail (and gives practical examples) on mainstream updates.
The main new features for BI workers in the November 2016 Power BI update
Posted by Andy Brown on 19 December 2016
A summary of the new features in the November 2016 Power BI Update, omitting things which are still only in preview.
How to create running totals or cumulative figures in Power BI Desktop
Posted by Andy Brown on 19 December 2016
There are a host of date-based functions in Power BI Desktop for producing cumulative figures, but how do you get running totals for non-date columns? This blog explains!
Passing parameters to SQL stored procedures in Power BI Desktop
Posted by Andy Brown on 30 November 2016
This blog summarises how to run SQL statements in a Power BI Desktop query, using dynamic SQL to pass in parameter values
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.