Blog – Michael Mertens

Jan 02

by mme in Software: Power BI & Analysis Services 0 comments

Configuration of Power BI Premium Per User

At the end of the previous year (2020), the new licensing option “Power BI Premium per User was introduced. It started with the possibility to ask for “priority access” for tenants. This phase is over and now every tenant should have the possibility to use the license options. There are new tenant settings “Premium per user (preview)” and it seems to be a common mistake (according to questions in the Power BI Community) to expect these settings to be the place to “switch on” Premium per user. (I also made this mistake). Here are four steps that can be used to get Power BI Premium per user up and running:

Dec 31

by mme in Software: Power BI & Analysis Services, Software: Tableau 0 comments

Hype about DirectQuery for Power BI datasets and Azure Analysis Services

There is a big hype about a new feature Microsoft provided under the name “DirectQuery for Power BI datasets and Analysis Services”: James Serra: Huge Improvement Paul Turley: It is truly the Utopian dream; the Holy Grail! Marco Russo / Alberto Ferrari: A milestone I agree with most of what they are writing, also regarding the importance of these changes. BUT, there is one thing I don’t like: Analysis Services on premises, especially Analysis Services Multidimensional is left out!

Jun 19

by mme in Business Modelling, Software: Power BI & Analysis Services 0 comments

Process Mining with Power BI and R Visuals

This little Power BI project is something like my “Hello World” for using R visuals. I picked Process Mining as the topic for the model because of several reasons: Process Mining is quite different to typical number-aggregating-scanarios, so hopefully interesting! The R visuals are adding possibilities to the project, that can’t be replaced by standard visuals easily. It is still easy to model and understand.

Jan 01

by mme in Software: Tableau 0 comments

Fürstenzug Dresden / Tableau Public Report

The following illustration is a test of the “embed” function of Tableau Public. That means that the report was created in Tableau Desktop and uploaded to Tableau Public.

Aug 25

by mme in Mathematics and Statistics 0 comments

vorgerech.net

vorgerech.net war meine alte Webseite, auf der insbesondere ein befreundeter Mathematikprofessor einige Skripte zur Ingenieurmathematik bereitgestellt hat. Die Seite ist nun abgeschaltet, die Skripte sind hier noch eine Weile herunterladbar:

Aug 25

by mme in Mathematics and Statistics, Software: Excel 0 comments

Optimierung mit dem Excel-Solver

In diesem Beitrag geht es um ein Thema aus dem wirtschaftswissenschaftlichen Fachgebiet des “Operation Research”, OR genannt. OR beschäftigt sich mit mathematischen Methoden, um betriebswirtschaftliche Probleme zu lösen, z.B. das Problem der Bestimmung von optimalen Losgrößen in der Produktion. Unter gewissen Bedingungen existieren Algorithmen zur Bestimmung von optimalen Lösungen; teilweise führen nur numerische Verfahren zum Ziel. Ein bekannter und relativ einfach verständlicher Algorithmus zur Lösung von linearen Optimierungsproblemen ist der Simplex-Algorithmus.

Aug 15

by mme in Software: Excel 0 comments

German-English Translations for Data Analysis

As a native German speaker I switch between English and German language a lot. Generally for server components like SQL Server and development environments like Visual Studio I find it much easier to use English versions. For frontends like Excel and PowerBI I also prefer English, however the colleagues who work with my applications usually use German versions. So I use both. For Excel this means constantly mixing up colon and semicolon in formulas. Plus I always forget that the German formulas even use Umlaute like “GLÄTTEN”. For Data Analysis functions I created a little sheet with screenshots of the functions I use. Maybe it can be useful for someone else who also uses German and English version. Here it is: screenshots plus a table for easier copy/paste (if necessary).

Aug 11

by mme in Technical Infrastructure 0 comments

VMWare Test Environment V. 1.0

Since many years I’m using VMWare virtualization software for setting up testing environments. In earlier times, the main benefit for me was to have presentation environments that were able to be resetted to a defined state (snapshot) when I went to customers for a presentation. I tried Hyper-V from Microsoft, which also worked ok, but came back to VMWare (Fusion) when I used a Macbook instead of a Windows notebook.

Aug 11

by mme in Learning And Getting Certified 0 comments

Microsoft Data Certifications

Microsoft puts a lot of efforts into technologies that are related to data, no matter whether you’d call it “Data Analytics”, “Data Science” or use the classic term “Business Intelligence (BI)”. For a company of this size it is no surprise that they have several offerings regarding education. When it comes to certifications, there are also two main “lines” in the meantime: the classic Microsoft Certification Program (MCP) with Microsoft Certified Solution Expert (MCSE) / Microsoft Certified Solution Associate (MCSA), and the rather new Microsoft Professional Program. I’m looking at “Data” only, so I narrow this post down to the relevant data certifications. These are: Microsoft Certified Solutions Expert for Data Management and Analytics Microsoft Professional Program for Data Science