This is my fuel. This is why I teach. Sure, I won’t please everyone. Not everyone will appreciate or will be happy with the way I teach, but even if there’s one person in the class who thinks the time they spent in my class was worth it – that’s all the reason I need.
(All names removed from cards below)
This is what I got today from a student:
This blog post is tested on SQL Server 2014 and PowerShell V5.
PowerShell has become more feature-rich in every version. We are now looking at PowerShell V5 (currently can be downloaded as part of Windows Management Framework v5 April 2015 Preview).
The support landscape with SQL Server hasn’t changed much. There isn’t a drastic increase in SQL Server cmdlets. However, the language and feature improvements in PowerShell in general improve how we can work with SQL Server.
One area where we can use PowerShell is with SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS). I blogged about this a while back, but it’s time to revisit and expand on how we can use PowerShell to automate report generation.
In this blog post I will focus on generating PDF reports via scripting. Let’s tackle this piece by piece first, and we’ll put everything in a nice little script at the end of the post.
I feel quite lucky to be working where I work. One of the things I like about working at a university is having access to a number of learning opportunities, be it credit or not-for-credit courses, or even 1 or 2 hour sessions on anything. I love learning so it’s a field day for me when I get to attend these courses or events.
Conversations with Impact
One session I recently attended was “Conversations With Impact”. Ms. Joanna Piros,a senior consultant with Counterpoint Communications and also faculty at UBC Sauder School of Business’s Executive Education program, was the one who delivered the one hour session.
At the beginning of the session, Ms. Piros emphasized three (3) key statements about conversations:
1. All communication is strategic
2. You must frame others before you frame yourself (I didn’t know what media framing meant before I attended this session)
3. You must tell stories
This definitely struck a chord with me because one of the courses I teach, Visual Analytics with Tableau, also revolves around telling stories with data.
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You’re a SQL Server DBA and you want to learn Windows Server Failover Clustering? On April 20, 2015 MSSQLTips is hosting an online training, and you can learn from SQL Server MVP and MCM (Microsoft Certified Master) Edwin Sarmiento. Check out the details here:
http://www.mssqltips.com/sqlservertraining/3/windows-server-failover-clustering-for-the-sql-server-dba/
Do you know that changing a shared axis chart to a stacked bar chart in Tableau is as easy as one drag?
Supposed you have a shared axis chart like this:
I had a question from one of my students tonight about how to show the header for text table with a single measure. It’s not super straightforward to do this in Tableau. You can’t simply to go the measure pill and show the header (because it doesn’t have it).
Let’s recreate the default Tableau behavior first, using Superstore Sales.
1. Double click on a dimension, for example, Product Category
2. Double click on a measure, for example, Sales
What you will get is something like this:
Looking for someone to jumpstart your visual analytics project or prototype?
At BCIT, we have been offering a course on Visual Analytics using Tableau to Part Time Studies students. This course is offered three terms:
Many students who register for Part Time Studies are working professionals who are taking courses to complete additional certificates/diplomas, or for professional development, or just plain curious.
Students enrolled in the COMP 2256 class learn visual best practices, some data analysis, and visualization using Tableau Desktop. Part of this twelve (12) week course is a term project which requires data analysis and visualization around a topic of their choice. They will need to submit a series of dashboards and a final project report at the end of the term.
The project requires the students to either:
look for a number of sizable public data sets that they’re interested in, and essentially create dashboards that will support their story
I encourage students to, as much as possible, choose #1. This is as “real world” as it gets. However, looking for a sponsor can become tricky and time consuming for already-working professionals, so I am hoping I can help match up my students to your projects.
Do you know how dates work in Tableau? It could be tricky, but once you get a handle on it, it can make your Tableau life much simpler.
The first step to understanding dates in Tableau is understanding the concept of discrete and continuous first. These are two very important concepts in Tableau that, if not clearly understood, can definitely cause a lot of confusion (and headaches). It can make you think you’re getting unexpected vizzes or behavior from the application, and that it’s not doing what it’s supposed to do.
A quick Google search lands us the definitions for these two terms:
discrete – individually separate and distinct
continuous – forming an unbroken whole; without interruption
Let’s tie these two terms back to Tableau:
| Discrete | Continuous |
|---|---|
| definition: individually separate and distinct | definition: forming an unbroken whole; without interruption |
| blue pill | green pill |
 |
 |
| gives you headers | gives you axes |
Just wanted to compile a list of datasets, or sources of datasets, that can be used for BI/Analytics/Visualization projects and explorations (not limited or specific to any tools). These come in different formats, and some may need to be cleaned up. Please do read the restrictions and EULAs that come with each of the links/sources.
This is a work in progress. I am still updating this post, and will most likely re-arrange or re-categorize the links as I stumble across other data sets.
If you have any that you can share, I would love to add those to this list (and mention you shared it!) – please leave a comment below and I will add them to the list!
Canadian Data
US Data
Did you know that you can copy and paste from Tableau Desktop to Excel, and vice versa?
While you have Tableau Desktop, you can select the marks you want to copy (or Ctrl+A to select all marks) and then Ctrl + C
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