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  • How to Handle Deleted Rows in an Incremental Load

    September 4th, 2026 in Big Data, Blog, Data Lakehouse, Data Warehouse, ETL, SQL, SQL Server, SSIS, Uncategorised

    Most data warehouse issues are apparent: a pipeline fails, an alert fires, you get a phone call at an unsociable hour. Deleted source data doesn’t do this. A row is removed from the source, and no one notices. It sits in the warehouse silently skewing measures and KPIs, until the finance director asks why a cancelled order is still in the revenue report. What’s causing this? Incremental loads use watermarks to avoid re-extracting…

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  • Two Outlook Connectors in Copilot Studio; What’s the Difference?

    FrogBlog_FeaturedImage_Lewis_Two-Outlook-Connectors-in-Copilot-Studio-Whats-the-Difference.avifJune 10th, 2026 in Blog, Copilot, Uncategorised

    Open the connector picker in Copilot Studio and search for Outlook. You’ll find two options: Office 365 Outlook and Microsoft 365 Outlook. Both send emails, both manage calendars, neither requires premium licensing. So why do they exist separately? Office 365 Outlook is the mature Power Platform connector. It works across Power Automate, Power Apps, Logic Apps, and Copilot Studio, with a wide action surface: triggers, folder management,…

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  • Why DuckDB Is the Data Engineer’s New Secret Weapon

    August 6th, 2025 in Blog, Data Warehouse, Python, SQL, Uncategorised

          Most databases need a server. DuckDB doesn’t. It’s a zero‑config, in‑process OLAP database you can run directly using Python. It’s fast, SQL‑friendly, and speaks Parquet like a native language — no clusters, no heavyweight setup, no waiting for provisioning. Think of DuckDB as SQLite for analytics — but faster, more column‑aware, and built for modern data engineering.   What Makes DuckDB Special DuckDB…

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  • Marketing in a data-driven world: My take on the AI discovery morning

    August 6th, 2025 in Artificial Intelligence, Blog, Community, Uncategorised

    On 3rd July, I had the amazing opportunity to support and represent Purple Frog Systems at our AI and Data Analytics Discovery Morning in Telford, and what a day it was! As the Marketing Associate, I’m usually found behind the scenes taking photos, managing our branding, and creating content. But this event gave me the chance to do so much more. Not only did I get to capture the day through my lens, but I also got involved in the conversations…

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  • FabCon Europe from a Community Point-of-View

    October 2nd, 2024 in Blog, Community, Fabric, Uncategorised

    A community hub at a data conference serves as a vital central point for building connections, collaboration, and innovation among attendees. The Community Lounge at FabCon Europe in Stockholm was a great example of this. It was a hive of activity across the entire event. Microsoft’s community staff, MVPs, volunteers and members all came together to provide an entertaining way to network and ensure the right people are signed up to the right…

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  • Power BI Dataset Gives Mashup Timeout Error While Refreshing

    July 26th, 2024 in Blog, Data Warehouse, Power BI, PowerBI, SQL, SQL Server, Uncategorised

    Help – my Power BI dataset is giving mashup timeout error on refresh The mashup timeout error Incremental refreshes are a great benefit to have in order to reduce refresh times – but not when they give a mashup timeout error. Although they are meant to be a performance enhancement, they aren’t always the best approach as they fire parallel queries to the source and apply date time filters. Despite the default timeout being 2 hours, or 5…

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  • Welcoming New Tadpoles to The Pond!

    Welcoming New Tadpoles to The Pond!May 17th, 2024 in careers, News, Uncategorised

    Here at Purple Frog Systems, we’re thrilled to announce some exciting additions to our team! Let’s give a warm welcome to our newest members: Mike Skitt – Mike joined us nearly six months ago as our Lead Solutions Architect for Power BI Sentinel. We know, better late than never, right? He’s all about speed, cruising in his Corvette, and finding tranquility with his impressive fish tank. Plus, he’s a huge Star Wars…

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  • Synapse Script Activity Error “Argument {0} is null or empty.\r\nParameter name: paraKey”

    November 1st, 2023 in Activity Error, ADFv2, Azure, Blog, Data Factory, SQL, Synapse, Uncategorised

    Came across this issue when trying to get a range of values that are calculated dynamically at runtime. Using the script activity in ADF, I wanted a result set that I could reference as parameters for a notebook later in the pipeline but was experiencing an error I had not seen before referencing null arguments. The Problem The script is simple – get a few key dates from the last few months and set these as variables. Finally, return these…

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  • Introduction to Power BI Project Files

    October 24th, 2023 in Blog, Power BI, PowerBI, Uncategorised

    Power Bi project files were showcased as an exciting upcoming feature by Microsoft for Power Bi. Developers can finally smile as it allows significantly easier collaboration with other developers and source control within Power Bi. We’ll go through a brief introduction to Power Bi Project files.     How to get a Power Bi Project File At the writing of this blogpost they are currently in preview and can be accessed via the ‘Preview…

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  • Power BI Table Totals Not Adding Up? Here’s Why!

    Power BI Table Totals Not Adding Up? Here's Why!October 4th, 2023 in Blog, DAX, PowerBI, Uncategorised

    Ever built a table containing measures in Power BI, done a quick sanity check on your table totals and noticed they’re incorrect? Let’s explore why this may be. Here we have a simple table, built from data in the AdventureWorks database. It shows the three product categories, the Total Sales and Average Order Total of each category: As you can see, the Total Sales column adds up perfectly, but the average is just plain wrong. 19.42 +…

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