Category: Business Intelligence

Architecture and Installation The folks at Microsoft have created quite a buzz with the integration of R scripting into SQL Server. In recent years, the open-source statistical program R has established itself as the de-facto statistics and analysis package for big data. But it has always been possible to query SQL Server from R using […]

Installation and Configuration of SQL Server 2016 Polybase Introduction Among SQL Server’s many new features introduced in 2016 is Polybase, a bridge between relational data stored in SQL Server and bulk data stored in the Hadoop ecosystem. Hadoop is an excellent store for what many folks call “semistructured” data. That is, data which cannot be […]

What is it about version 2.0? Perhaps when software reaches version 2.0 it seems to have gained some maturity and respectability, but is still young enough to be filled with excitement and energy. In any case, Microsoft’s Power BI Version 2.0, announced for general availability July 24, is generating considerable excitement within the community of […]

Christine, a student in Learning Tree’s course SQL Server Analysis Services for Business Intelligence, writes “I just created my first Analysis Services tabular model database, and I am having lots of fun. But now I want to do some more sophisticated statistical analysis using R. I can’t seem to find a way to use DAX […]

Don’t get me wrong. Excel PivotTables are one of the best things since pizza and beer. (And considering how much I enjoy that particular combination of snack and beverage, that’s really saying something.) Nevertheless, there are times when you want to take full control, write your own DAX query, and display the results in a […]