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Share my experiences in analytics, reporting through visualization, and self-service tools.
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Author Archives: alapitsk
My Original Thoughts Regarding MS Fabric
After spending some time exploring MS Fabric from the perspective of a mid-size nonprofit, here are my initial observations. It is a well-put-together and powerful tool that can serve well to the right organization. On the other hand, it is … Continue reading
PowerBI Associate Certification Annual Renewal
It has been almost a year since I certified as a PowerBI analyst with PL 3oo certification. I took me a few months to prepare for the exam and it was not easy at all. Even though I work with … Continue reading
Posted in MS PowerBI Certification
Tagged PL 300 Renewal, PL300, Preparation PL300
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Filtering Using CHARINDEX
Most of the time when I need to query rows, I would use column name and LIKE operator. However, CHARINDEX operator can provide a quick way to check if a particular word or special character is present in the column. … Continue reading
Easy Way To Randomize Records
There are some fancy ways to create random records. Some formulas/codes generate random numbers between 0/1, some others pick every Nth record. This method is very simple and works by creating a new ID string for each record and then … Continue reading
Posted in Interesting SQL Patterns
Tagged Easy QA, Randomize Records, SQL tricks
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PowerBI Associate Certification
Early in April 2023, I passed the Microsoft PowerBI Certification exam (PL300) on the first attempt. The passing grade is 70%, however, the exam is by no means easy. It tries to cover a variety of components of PowerBI and, … Continue reading
Posted in MS PowerBI Certification
Tagged PL300, Power BI Associate, PowerBI Cert, PowerBI Cert Exam, Preparation PL300
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Converting Character Date To Datetime
I run into an interesting conversion situation when a vendor returned some birthdate data in a text format and I needed to convert it to Datetime to insert the records into the data warehouse. The obvious Cast and Convert did … Continue reading
Posted in Interesting SQL Patterns
Tagged character to datetime, sql conversion, SQL tricks
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Organizing Visuals For End-Users
Sometimes we build models with lots of measures in the fact tables. Also, columns that are less likely to be utilized can be quite distracting. See a small fact table below: To make that fact table easier to use, I … Continue reading
Posted in Modeling and Data Sources
Tagged folder, hidden items, PowerBI, Tabular
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Questions To Ask When Buying External Data
Often we need to enhance internal data by using the services of external vendors. Most organizations already use vendors in some capacity. For analytics, they could be a source of additional data, partner for a specific project, or act as … Continue reading
Posted in Modeling and Data Sources
Tagged costs, data source, modeling, purchase data, use cases
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Getting Data Left or Right of a Delimiter
It is a very common case when one needs to remove values left or right of a delimiter.The pattern below should work for most of the common cases. Note that JSON was misinterpreting some special characters, therefore, I posted a … Continue reading
Posted in Interesting SQL Patterns, Uncategorized
Tagged CHARINDEX, delimiter, left, pattern, right, sql
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Ranking Donors. Breaking Tie.
I recently run into an issue when I needed to select the top 5 donors based on the contribution amount by occupation. The process is not that complex, however, for certain occupations, a large number of donors had the same … Continue reading