Chart formatting options using Power BI

Customers are used to eye candy as most of social media strive to provide. While working with data it is not just eye-candy effects that are the driving force for visualization but controls available to bring out the features of data like its value representation; what it represents; relative magnitiudes; values of each piece of data, etc. Power BI can do a lot of this with simple choices. It is pretty find grained.

Take for example this mundane bar chart of some values in a chart of two axes. It shows a 'bar graph' and the default formatting if any are barely visible.

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The formatting icon is where you click and start.

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Right now only X-axis, Y-axis and Title are turned all on but you can hardly see any details. Using the drop-down you can control the Data colors; Data labels, background, border and lock aspect (locking the aspect ratio of the chart).

Presently the default color of all the six X-axis values are 'Green'.

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However you can individually color them if there is a need. For this you need to turn on 'Show all'.

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This image shows each data with a different color. You cal also go to default if you do not like. These changes in formatting renders the visualization as shown which is immediate.

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You can also change the title which is barely visible clicking on 'Title' .

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These changes in formatting renders the visualization as shown which is immediate.

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You can turn on the Data lables turning 'Off' to 'On' by pulling the slider to right.
You will notice that the letters are too small to read (see above image).

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You can work all the controls under Data Labels and make it look better as shown. If you click X-Axis or Y-axis then you can modify the formatting as swell.

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If you have a saved image or logo or any background image you can add as shown and set its transparency as shown.

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Similarly you can set the backgorund color and its tranpareancy as well.

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In the 'General' section you can set the settings shown.

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New data connectors in the June 2017 Power BI

Although some of the new connectors are generally available, some are in BETA. Here is a complete picture
of the data connectors available in Power BI (June 2017).

Here is complete picture of all data connector updates from Microsoft site. The ones highlighted are the new ones.

Here is a connector update video from Microsoft site.

Data Bars are new in Power BI (June 2017)

Looking at a bunch of data does not give a feeling for the big and small values without making comparisons by reasoning. This next table is trivial in that you can easily see the small and big values. However I have chosen this to make the explanation easy to understand.

This comparison is built into the idea of presenting data bars in Microsoft programs such as MS Excel and Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services 2012.

In the June 2017 version of Power BI Desktop which is in preview 'Data Bars' are supported. What Data Bars do is to show visually how big or small data values are. Here is an example from my previous post how the data is visualized after adding Data Bars.

Four types of Data Bars are shown in the above: Data Bars, Color Scales, Icon sets and 'Above average' types.

In the present version this is how 'Data Bars' feature is implemented.

I have imported the same data as in the previous post into Power BI using 'Get Data'.

I added the two fields 'State' and 'Item Value' into the fields as shown above.
 I had to rename 'State' to 'St' as 'State' may be keyword in Power BI which automatically formats as s map (this was on another page of the view)

This is probably some 'bug' in the software in this Preview version here.

Now right click the 'Item Value' in the fields as shown.

In the Conditional formatting menu choose 'Color scales'.

Here you can choose colors to represent Minimum, Middle and Maximum values and click OK.

That is all there is to it.

Power BI Report Server and Power BI Premium

From creating reports to distribute and consume them across devices using Power BI you can use the premium version. You publish reports to Power BI Report Server which is similar to Reporting Services report server to organize and manage access to reports and update when needed. With Power BI you can handle not only today's needs but also future shift to the Cloud.

Power BI report comes with Power  BI Premium. It became generally available last month. It costs a minimum of $625/month to embedd Power BI Premium into apps.

Get you free trial to check it out!

Power BI Report governance behind your on-premises reporting behind corporate firewall is made easy.Power BI is compatible with the Cloud.

"With Power BI apps, now in preview, you can easily deploy a collection of purpose-built dashboards and reports to a large number of business users and empower them to make data-driven decisions. "

How much does it cost to use Power BI?

Well. Microsoft has this online calculator to find out for yourself how mch it would cost.
Play with the app to estimate your cost.

Hands-on Learning Event in Honolulu 1 : Introduction to Structured Query Language

Course summary:

Databases - organized repositories of information have become indispensable. Knowledge of databases is a must for professionals and in fact even more relevant since the emergence of Big Data in today's world.

In this introductory course you will learn all about relational databases and the basics of Structured Query Language (SQL) including sorting; grouping result sets; using DDL, DML, DCL, and TCL. All SQL statements will initially be written for one table. Most practical, modern and relational databases will include a large number of tables and SQL queries have to access information from several tables. This course will then introduce you to querying more than one table. With this skill you will be able to query two or more tables in a database. This is a hands-on course which will take you from installing SQL Server 2016; learning the ins and outs of SQL Server Management Studio and of course a full dose of SQL. You will be both coding as well using Graphical User Interface during this training.

During each meeting the students will be assessed for their knowledge, competency and proficiency in SQL.

Databases, organized repositories of information, have become indispensable in today's world. In this introductory course you will learn about relational databases and the basics of Structured Query Language (SQL) including sorting; grouping result sets; using DDL, DML, DCL, and TCL. All SQL statements will initially be written for one table. Most practical, modern and relational databases will include a large number of tables and SQL queries have to access information from several tables. This course will introduce you to querying more than one table. With this skill you will be able to query two or more tables in a database.

This is a hands-on course which will take you from installing SQL Server 2012 to learning the ins and outs of SQL Server Management Studio and of course a full dose of SQL. The course covers most of the requirements to take Microsoft's certification (98-364), the Microsoft Technology Associate. During each meeting, you will be assessed for your knowledge, competency and proficiency in SQL.

Section 1 - Jul 6 - Aug 8; TTh; 5:30 pm - 7:30 pm; 10 mtgs (Register Online)

Microsoft SQL Azure Database: SQL Server in Microsoft Cloud
Windows PowerShell for SQL Server
SQL Server 2016

You may also contact the instructor: Dr. Jayaram Krishnaswamy at hodentek@live.com

Adding Full-Text feature to an existing installation of SQL Server 2016

If you need to do a text-based search in SQL Server you need to install this feature. Chances are that you forgot...

It is a good practice that you only install what you need, otherwise you may end of reserving resources for things you do not need. However often times you need to add a feature to an existing installation of SQL Server 2016. There is no better place to go than the SQL Server Installation Center.

This slide show shows how you may do this.

https://youtu.be/6S25lHM15E4