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  • How to Trigger a Power BI Dataset Refresh via Azure Synapse Analytics in 3 Simple Steps.

    June 27th, 2022 in Azure, Blog, Business Intelligence, Power BI, Synapse

    In this blog post we’ll explore how to trigger a Power BI Dataset via Azure Synapse Analytics in 3 simple steps: Step 1: Create a new security group called “AzureSynapsePowerBIIntegration” in your Azure Active Directory. Next add the name of your Azure Synapse Workspace as a member of your new security group. This will be your service principal. Step 2: Login to powerbi.com and in the top right hand corner locate “Settings” and…

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  • Deploy Azure AutoML Model And Consume In Excel

    May 31st, 2022 in Blog, Machine Learning, Uncategorized

    It has come back to my turn to write a blog post, and if you remember my previous one concerned why you should use Azure based AutoMl and subsequently how to do so. If you followed that then you will be left with a model of which you’ve scored and know the performance of, but no way of how to then deploy and use your model. I will outline the steps needed to do this (which involves a major shortcut as we are using an AutoMl model), and…

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  • The SQL Query Alias Conundrum – Order of Execution

    May 17th, 2022 in Blog, SQL Server, Uncategorized

    So, you have just written a query, hit execute and you have encountered an error: Invalid column name ‘[column name]‘. The column you’ve used in your WHERE clause cannot be identified by its alias. You’ve defined it at the top of the query and used it fine previously as your ORDER BY condition, so why can’t the engine recognise it? If you’ve ever written a SQL query, this should look familiar: SELECT DISTINCT FROM JOIN ON…

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  • ADF Dataflow CTE workaround

    May 13th, 2022 in Azure, Blog, Data Factory, Synapse

    At the time of writing, it is not possible to write a query using a CTE in the source of a dataflow. However, there are a few options to deal with this limitation: re-write the query using subqueries instead of CTEs use a stored procedure that contains the query and reference the stored proc in the source of the dataflow write the query as a view and reference the view in the source of the dataflow (this is my preferred method and the one I will…

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  • Download Power BI Reports using PowerShell

    April 14th, 2022 in Blog, Power BI, PowerShell, Uncategorized

    In this blog post I will be sharing a PowerShell script that allows multiple Power BI reports to be downloaded at once. In the Power BI service, there is no way of downloading multiple Power BI reports at once. Therefore, users must download files one by one which is slow, time consuming and inefficient. Thankfully, there are ways around this, one of which is using PowerShell. The script is downloadable at the bottom of the page as a txt file.…

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  • How to parameterise the Execute Pipeline activity in Azure Synapse Analytics.

    April 12th, 2022 in Azure, Blog, Data Factory, Synapse, Uncategorized

    Unfortunately, as of April 2022 there is not an option to parameterise or add dynamic content to an “Execute Pipeline” activity to invoke a pipeline run. However, with the use of a Microsoft API there is method which we can use to overcome this. In this blog post we’ll use the “Pipeline – Create Pipeline Run” API documented below: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/rest/api/synapse/data-plane/pipeline/create-pipeline-run…

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  • AutoML; How to use it and why

    March 18th, 2022 in Blog, Uncategorized

    Introduction Some of you may have noticed that the Purple Frog team were at the largest community-led SQL Server and Microsoft Data Platform conference in Europe last week; SQL Bits. With all of us learning a lot, I thought I would share some of the knowledge I picked up in the Machine Learning space with you this week. I went to a session by Gavita Regunath of Advancing Analytics on the topic of AutoML, and why not just beginners in…

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  • Combining Queries from Multiple Sources in Power BI using Merge and Append

    March 1st, 2022 in Azure, Blog, Business Intelligence, Power BI, Power Query, SQL Server, Uncategorized

    It is always good practice to do as much data preparation as close to the sources as you can before importing or connecting them to your Power BI reports, but what if there are circumstances where this isn’t possible? I had an issue recently where a third-party application had been updated and both the new and legacy versions were being used side-by-side. Logging data from both versions was being written to two separate Azure SQL databases.…

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  • Execute SQL Task in ADF

    February 25th, 2022 in Azure, Blog, Data Factory, SQL Server, SSIS, Synapse

    If you’re new to ADF or Synapse pipelines and looking for a way to execute SQL commands in pipelines, unfortunately there is no equivalent to the Execute SQL Task in SSIS, but I have found some alternatives which work well for me. For something as simple as a SELECT statement where you want to return results to be used later, you can use a Lookup activity: You can then reference the output of this activity in other activities using dynamic…

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  • Creating a quadratic solver in Python

    February 3rd, 2022 in Blog, Python, Uncategorized

    In this blog post, I will be showing you how to create a python function that will solve any quadratic equation. Firstly, what is a quadratic equation? A quadratic is an algebraic equation that can be arranged as ax2 + bx + c = 0 where a, b, c are known and a ≠ 0. If a = 0 then the equation becomes linear as there isn’t a x2 term. Secondly, how to solve this equation? There are different ways to solves quadratic equations including: By…

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