The value of durable keys in type-2 dimensions

We're all familiar with surrogate keys in dimensions, but have you ever used (or considered using) a durable key in the design of your type-2 dimensions?

In this session we'll look at what durable keys are, and how it can be implemented to improve query and load performance.

BIML-UP!! How I use BIML to speed up SSIS development.

Updating SSIS packages can be tedious and error-prone. Let me show you how I use BIML and Excel to dramatically speed things up.

SSIS is a great product, but making changes to many packages takes a thousand clicks and you're more than likely going to make some mistakes.

In this session I'll show you how I've changed my SSIS development methodology to use BIML, C# and Excel to create a metadata-driven environment that eliminates repetitive tasks and dramatically speeds up the time it takes to create, change or recreate SSIS packages.

We'll cover some BIML basics as a starting point, work our way up to what a source-to-target mapping document is and how it's used in Data Warehouse projects, and hit our stride by bringing these two together in a beautiful and effective manner. It's time to BIML-UP!

Advanced Power BI Modeling Techniques

Creating a Power BI data model is pretty easy, but sometimes we have to deal with more complex scenarios the require us to dig a little deeper.

In this session we'll take your modeling skills to the next level as we explore a few advanced techniques that deal with displaying measures or KPIs in the rows of a table (as opposed to the columns), dynamic currency conversions and an alternate approach to role-playing dimensions

Working with OAuth 2.0 APIs in Azure Data Factory

Working with APIs can be tricky, and even more so when it's an OAuth 2.0 API. Add to that an ETL platform and automation, and you now have a perfect storm that's pretty difficult to navigate.

This session is about my journey with OAuth 2.0 APIs while trying to extract my own financial data, how I struggled with the authorization flow and how it finally started making sense.

We'll talk about what an OAuth 2.0 API is, and why they are so difficult to deal with when your tool of choice is an automated ETL platform. After that we'll take a closer look at the steps to develop an ADF pipeline that extracts data from an OAuth 2.0 API, and review some tools that can help you throughout the development process.

Power BI Development Best Practices

Are you a developer or analyst, creating Power BI reports that will be shared across teams or even your entire organization? Moving from "quick and dirty" deployments to production ready solutions intended for larger audiences means that you should already be thinking about performance, standardization and (most importantly) your end users.

In this session we will take a closer look at the considerations and best practices when developing Power BI models, reports and dashboards to help you bridge the gap and make your solutions enterprise ready.

Some of the topics we will cover: Power BI Desktop Configuration; Connection Reuse; Entity/Table Design; Cross Filters; Date Entities; Aggregates & Measures.

The 10 commandments of ETL

ETL (Extract, Transform & Load) processes are fundamentally important in any data warehouse environment, and there are many different ways in which to develop the components.

In this session I will share the 10 basic principles I follow when developing ETL processes, and also show how the different choices can affect performance. Following these simple guidelines have resulted in many successful projects and happy customers. I'm sure it will work for you too!!