Slides on A Lap Around Microsoft's Business Intelligence Platform

A lap around microsofts business intelligence platform from Ike Ellis

Visual Studio Azure Data Lake Issues

I had a weird issue with Visual Studio and Azure Data Lake.  It manifested itself in three ways:

1)  In the server dropdown of the U-SQL script editor, I could only see (Local) and not my ADLA account:

2)  When I closed an ADLA solution and reopened it, I would get "project not available."

3)  In Azure Cloud Explorer, I would get "Resource Unavailable" underneath Data Lake Analytics:

I couldn't figure out what the problem was.  I had a lot of tools installed and I think some were in beta...or I had an old version of the Azure Developer Tools.  I tried removing everything and readding it, but the problem persisted.

I finally just shotgunned the problem and created a new VM image.  I installed the following things in this order:

1)  Visual Studio 2015 Professional with Update 3.

2) Azure Developer Tools from this link: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/tools/

3) Azure Data Lake Tools (the Feb 8th build) from this link:  https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=49504

My problems all went away.  Hope this helps someone else.

Power BI - Creating a playable scatterchart

I created seven quick youtube videos on how to create a playable scatterchart like the one Hans Rosling created in his famous Ted talk.  This is part of a playlist that you'll see if you watch the video on YouTube.

PASS Summit 2016 - Come Join the Camp Fire

In a world of digital learning, it's easy to excuse yourself from going to a conference.

 "I can just learn on my own time, at my own convenience."

So compelling! I can sit in my underwear, watch online videos, eat popcorn, and half pay attention to it while I listen to sports in the background.

Although learning this way is filled with value, there are a few drawbacks to it.

First, you only learn what you want to learn. This means you are learning from what your mind already knows you don't know. But what about the things you don't know you don't know. New technologies, new methodologies, and new skills can be completely necessary to you, but very difficult to discover all by yourself.

Second, the best way to learn something is to explain it to someone else, something you can't do alone in your own home.

Third, you can't ask a video questions when you don't understand something. You can try comments on youtube or twitter or email, but you aren't guaranteed a response. If the answer requires a bit of a conversation, then you will certainly not get a good interaction or response.

Fourth, you can't hear other questions that aren't your own. Listening to other questions will often fill in a gap that you didn't even know you had.



Finally, when you meet someone later who saw the same thing, you can immediately bond over what you saw. This makes conversation easier and might lead to a valuable friendship in the future.

This is the main reason why I go to PASS Summit every year. Learning together is way more fulfilling and enriching than learning by myself. I equate it to being a log on a campfire. All the logs together burn brighter. Take a log off the fire and set it alone and it quickly burns out. PASS Summit 2016 is the best way to avoid burnout if you are a Microsoft data professional.

Training Videos on the Redgate Developer Bundle

These videos will train you on every product in the Redgate Developer bundle, including SQL Prompt, SQL Source Control, SQL Data Generator, SQL Schema Compare, SQL Doc, SQL Data Compare, and SQL Search.

Slides from my SQL in the City Seattle presentation

11 Goals of High Functioning SQL Developers from Ike Ellis

Pluralsight offline player doesn't show the course list

Just in case anyone else has this problem: I use the Pluralsight offline player to watch videos on my 1 hour train ride to and from work. I noticed that the player wouldn't load the course list intermittently. Then I noticed that it would load the coarse list if I had internet access, which defeats the purpose of an offline player.

 After a little thought, I figured out that the Pluralsight offline player uses Silverlight, but it doesn't load it. Internet Explorer can load it. So if it is not showing your course list, launch IE, then launch the player. Your course list will show up afterwards.