I recently finished the book Calling Bullshit – The Art of Skepticism in a Data-Driven World by Carl T. Bergstrom & Jevin D. West. I found it a very entertaining read, and especially useful in this day and age of social media, fake news and deep fakes. Calling out bullshit has been necessary for a […]
Author: Koen Verbeeck
Koen Verbeeck is a Microsoft Business Intelligence consultant at AE, helping clients to get insight in their data. Koen has a comprehensive knowledge of the SQL Server BI stack, with a particular love for Integration Services. He's also a speaker at various conferences.
#TSQL2sday 136 – Your Favorite Data Type
It’s T-SQL Tuesday time again, and this month’s honor to host the blog party goes to Brent Ozar. The topic is data types: Mad about money? Feverish about float? Tell us what you use your favorite data type for, and what people need to know before they get started using it. Data types have so many interesting […]
SSIS and the “ORA-00907: missing right parenthesis” error
I had the extreme pleasure recently to extract some data out of an Oracle database. I wrote the source query in Toad, where it executed successfully. I created my SSIS package, added the dataflow and an OLE DB Source component. I copy pasted the query into the editor and tested it using the preview. Which […]
STAR SCHEMA ALL THE THINGS
The title says it all, but I’ll explain it anyway. When building a data model that will be used for analysis by human beings, always create a star schemas. Or multiple star schemas connected with conformed dimensions. Why? Because it’s the most intuitive and user-friendly interface. Because remember, your data model is the user interface […]
Small Multiples in Power BI
In the December 2020 release of Power BI Desktop, a long-awaited feature was added as a preview: small multiples (also known as trellis chart). A feature request for this chart type has been made since 2015! Small multiple charts are a set of charts of the same type on a grid, allowing you to easily […]
Unable to validate source query in Tabular Editor
When you have a very large fact table in Analysis Services Tabular, you most likely have it partitioned. Suppose you are making some changes to the underlying source of the table and you hit “refresh table metadata” to add some new columns for example. What happens behind the scenes is that Tabular Editor will run […]
Upcoming Webinar- Introduction to SSIS
At February 25th March the 4th 2021 I’ll be giving a webinar on the MSSQLTips.com website. The topic is Integration Services. This webinar is meant as an introduction for beginners. The abstract: For years, Microsoft SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) has been the tool in the data platform stack to integrate, move and transform your […]
MSSQLTips Author of the Year 2020
At least there’s one consistency in the year 2020: every day amazing articles are published on the MSSQLTips.com. And the author of the year contest at the end of the year! I’ve been nominated again for the author of the year award, and you can vote here. There are many excellent authors nominated as well, […]
Top 5 Blog Posts of 2020
If you’re wondering what you’ve all been reading while working at home, here’s the list: Cool Stuff in Snowflake – Part 3: SPLIT and FLATTEN – People really seem to want to split some strings in Snowflake, and are possibly surprised with the resulting array. Like I was. Dynamically Changing Shapes in Power BI – […]
Good Riddance 2020
Normally I’d write a “Happy xxxx” blog post at the start of the new year, but this time I’m just glad the previous year is over. It has been a remarkable year to say the least. Focusing on the Data Community, I think I’ll remember 2020 for two reasons: The rise of the virtual event. […]