Tag: Excel

  • DAX Formulas To Know And Love

    PowerPivot this. PowerPivot that. Blah, blah, blah. Sorry folks, I don’t have time to learn your new Excel plugin because I’m writing SQL! I’m hardcore! Well, I finally started using PowerPivot a few days ago and I’m pretty impressed (although I seem to be able to make Excel crash pretty frequently). So I’m starting a […]

  • Formatting MDX and DAX: Free Online Tool From Microsoft

    Ever cut and paste a mess of generated MDX from Excel? How about a coworker who doesn’t know how to use the “tab” key when working in SQL Server Management Studio? I came across this no frills online MDX formatter from “Microsoft Labs” and have been using it for the last few days to clean […]

  • Parse and sort SET STATISTICS IO output with Excel

    I wish I could say this was my idea. Somebody posted it on twitter awhile back and I did the classic “facepalm”. I have no idea how many times I manually picked apart the results of SQL Server’s SET STATISTICS IO ON without considering creating a formula to handle it for me. So, somebody came […]

  • Execute Stored Procedure From Excel With Temp Table

    Do you want to execute a stored procedure from Excel?  No problem!  Does your proc contain a temp table? Problem!  Actually, don’t panic.  The fix is incredibly simple.  Tracking down this post was probably the most difficult part.  When executing a SQL Server proc with a temp table you must remember to “SET NOCOUNT ON” […]

  • Most Effective Business Intelligence Charts And Graphs

    As software vendors flood us with flashy dashboards and widgets for our BI projects, some of which clearly obscure information more than they illuminate, I started  hunting for research documenting which methods of charting are the most effective.  Naomi B. Robbins “Creating More Effective Graphs” presentation fits the bill (turns out the presentation is based […]

  • Radar Chart? You must be kidding.

    I’ve been thinking about the display of data quite a bit lately.  Some ways of presenting data are clearly more effective than others.  When providing data in a visual format the goals are one of the following: