Identifying Customer Buying Pattern in Power BI - Part 1 (2024-04-19)

SQLServerCentral Newsletter for April 19, 2024 Problems displaying this newsletter? [View online](. [SQL Server Central]( Featured Contents - [Identifying Customer Buying Pattern in Power BI - Part 1]( - [Pagination and ordering by large values]( - [From the SQL Server Central Blogs - Learning SQL Book Review – Best Free Book for Learning SQL for Beginners]( - [From the SQL Server Central Blogs - Book Review: 100 SQL Server Mistakes]( - [Learn T-SQL Querying]( Question of the Day - [Read Only Replica in SQL Server Standard]( The Voice of the DBA  Knowing What You Don’t Know Today we have a guest editorial from Grant Fritchey as Steve is traveling. I’ve been reading a fascinating history about Audrey Hepburn and her experiences growing up under occupation during World War II. Not only is her personal story riveting, but the details around the occupation are also frequently new knowledge for me. I’m a huge history nerd. I read quite a bit of history, and it just fascinates me. However, reading this book, I realized that I have enormous holes in my knowledge, forcing me to reexamine what I think I know. I believe it’s vital that we, as data professionals, continuously reexamine what we think we know as well. I recently wrote a blog post on this same topic, lamenting that people weren’t learning Extended Events because the early launch was, frankly, bad. Yet, things have radically improved, but lots of people, including ones I respect and admire, haven’t gone back to reexamine the issue. They didn’t know that things had changed. They had gaps in their knowledge. So, my question today is, how do you go about identifying that you have gaps in your knowledge? Let’s paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld a bit. There are the things that you know you know. There are the things that you know that you do not know. Having this boundary is vital. Being honest about it is even more so. However, there are also things that you do not know that you do not know. How do you go about tracking those down? Should you bother? I have a recent example from a question online. A group was taking server backups. The whole server. They weren’t backing up databases. Well, a database became corrupted. They went to their backup, but couldn’t restore the entire thing. That would mean taking down the server. They managed to pluck an MDB file out. However, that wouldn’t restore, no matter what they did. Then they started trying to attach it, which also wasn’t working. In short, they didn’t know what they didn’t know about backups, restores, attachments, corruption, and disaster recovery. That lack of knowledge about their lack of knowledge hurt them. Short of sprinting straight into a brick wall, learning the hard way, how do we go about narrowing that gap? How do you go about narrowing that gap? Do you bother trying to narrow the gap? Grant Fritchey [Join the debate, and respond to today's editorial on the forums](   Featured Contents [SQLServerCentral Article]( [Identifying Customer Buying Pattern in Power BI - Part 1]( Farooq Aziz from SQLServerCentral In this article, we discuss market-based analysis techniques for customer purchasing patterns for different products over the years in Power BI. [External Article]( [Pagination and ordering by large values]( Additional Articles from SimpleTalk Pagination is a technique for limiting output. Think of Google search results, shopping the electronics category on Amazon, or browsing tagged questions on Stack Overflow. Nobody could consume all of the results in a single shot, and no site wants to spend the resources required to present them all to us [Blog Post]( From the SQL Server Central Blogs - [Learning SQL Book Review – Best Free Book for Learning SQL for Beginners]( Tracy McKibben from RealSQLGuy - Helping You To Become A SQL Hero Data is everywhere, and if you want to make sense of it, SQL (Structured Query Language) is your secret weapon. Whether it’s managing customer data or analyzing trends, SQL... [Blog Post]( From the SQL Server Central Blogs - [Book Review: 100 SQL Server Mistakes]( Steve Jones - SSC Editor from The Voice of the DBA I was approached by Manning Publications and asked to review 100 SQL Server Mistakes and How to Avoid Them. They gave me a free copy of the book (and... [Learn T-SQL Querying]( [Learn T-SQL Querying]( Additional Articles from SQLServerCentral Troubleshoot query performance issues, identify anti-patterns in your code, and write efficient T-SQL queries with this guide for T-SQL developers   Question of the Day Today's question (by Stewart "Arturius" Campbell):  Read Only Replica in SQL Server Standard Our environment runs using SQL Server Standard. We are implementing Availability groups. Our database has been experiencing high read volumes, so I want to let the application read the Synchronized Secondary replica, as I read that HADR does this. Can we implement this? Think you know the answer? [Click here]( and find out if you are right.    Yesterday's Question of the Day (by Steve Jones - SSC Editor) Restoring the Resource Database How can I restore a version of the Resource Database in SQL Server 2022? Answer: Manually overwrite the current mdf with a backup version Explanation: To restore the Resource database, you must do this manually. Ref: Backing up and Restoring the Resource Database - [ [Discuss this question and answer on the forums](    Database Pros Who Need Your Help Here's a few of the new posts today on the forums. To see more, [visit the forums](. --------------------------------------------------------------- SQL Server 2019 - Administration [given value of type String from the data source cannot be converted to type nvar]( - Hi, I have created a variable in Powershell to export to a SQL table. The variable looks like this $DateTime = $((Get-Date).ToString('yyyy-MM-dd-hh_mm_ss')) When I try to insert this into the table I get the following message: The given value of type String from the data source cannot be converted to type nvarchar of the specified […] [Problems Connecting to Sybase using ODBC Drivers]( - Hi All, I have recently migrated a sql database from an old server to a new one. This database is populated from an old sybase database. I have made the required changes to the SSIS job using visual studio and runs there fine. I have setup the ODBC DSN connectors and they test successfully. However […] SQL Server 2019 - Development [automate sql installation in a 2-node windows failover cluster]( - Can you recommend best blog or approach or scripts to automate sql installation in a 2-node windows failover cluster? [Create list of random, mutually exclusive selection(s) from the same table]( - The TEMP table '#project_types' has 3 columns: 1) a pk, 2) the 'project_type' unique name, and 3) 'is_combinable' which is a 0/1 boolean (INT because legacy...). The job spec for this part (of the larger project specification) says: "randomly select a representative distribution of 1 value (if not combinable) or 1-3 values (if combinable) and […] [gut check dba's recommendation to increase log to 200gig]( - Hi , log files have always blown my mind. I'll try to explain simply what prompted this post and then ask the community for direction. we run a 2019 std sql agent job daily early morning mostly made up of 12 steps each responsible for ingesting to our wh sales facts and dimensions from 12 […] SQL Azure - Development [Tunning or alternative to PIVOT]( - Hi everyone, we have a table containing kind of key-value pairs, which are the columns of some entities. This is how master data is ingested in the platform. Then a query does some joins, filtering and finally a PIVOT to only output a row by entity, with all their columns denormalized. The query plan looks […] Integration Services [SSIS package not parsing statement with exec (SP) with resultset]( - I have a package that loops through a bunch of SQL Servers and executes a stored procedure that uses temp tables. It was build in 2008 and I am now moving it to 2016 but having issues getting it to work in 2008 the OLE DB sql was simply "uspSystem_GetDatabaseInfo" That was giving me grief […] [SSIS Execute Package Utility Issue]( - Hi everyone, So I have a ssis package that performs various operations like import, export etc based on values provided in config files. Today I have added some more code in the script task that downloads a pdf file, converts it to excel format and then reads this file and perform ETL operations. It loads […] Design Ideas and Questions [EF Schema Deployment]( - Just looking for some background on if anything has changed around "code first" for building schema. I've always preferred designing first, then building the schema (usually in a database project) and handling changes to schema that way. I'm in the position now where there is a project where it appears the developers picked EF and […] [Designing two tables considering following scenario.]( - I want to design two tables considering the following scenario. Consider the image below:   I’m moving blue boxes (which shows up on screen after Show Options the button is clicked) from left to right (on the grid) after clicking Move Text Content! button. Here are the steps I follow: Select one option from […] SQL Server 2022 - Administration [Backup to Azure blob storage via Maintenance Plan]( - Am trying to set up backups to a storage container on Azure government. If I backup a database using Tasks -> Backup database I am able to backup successfully; it generates the following script which works: BACKUP DATABASE [BLAH] TO URL = N' WITH NOFORMAT, NOINIT, NAME = N'BLAH-Full Database Backup', NOSKIP, NOREWIND, NOUNLOAD, STATS […] [Always On-manual failover - warning on possible data loss]( - Hi, I'm testing basic alwayson with SQL Server 2022 Standard on two servers (primary and secondary replica with an old Adventureworks database). The idea is to allow sql clients to continue to operate while one server is down for updating and rebooting (monthy windows and sql server updates). I'm testing the manual failover: Although the […] SQL Server 2022 - Development [How to use custom replication stored procedure for transactional replication]( - I previously posted a question about setting up replication with custom replication stored procedures (for delete especially) to allow for a longer retention period on the subscriber than on the publisher. The following two MSDN articles were referenced, and I thought I understood them. Transactional Articles - Specify How Changes Are Propagated Transactional Articles - […] [Contained availability groups error]( - Hello, I am testing the setup of contained availability groups. I am getting some strange errors while creating contained availability groups both through wizzard and with TSQL. I started with creating a contained availability group with the wizzard on MSSMS. Setup: I clicked the contained checkbox. The databases Meet prerequesites (FULL backup was made beforehand). […] [Seeding Contained availability groups]( - /    [RSS Feed]( This email has been sent to {EMAIL}. To be removed from this list, please click [here](. If you have any problems leaving the list, please contact the webmaster@sqlservercentral.com. 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