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How ministers come and go - Visualizing governmental change

When hearing about governmental politics, we encounter a lot of information, some official - some from different observers and commentators. We frequently hear about internal turmoil or even crises in the government, and from time to time we see a minister leaving or switching office for one reason or another. Such changes are, of course, recorded in official annals and publications - but rarely do we take the time to actually put a visual face and pattern on this data. If we could do that, it might prompt us to ask other - perhaps more interesting - questions - and hopefully, get interesting answers. In today's post, we will use Tableau to make a little data journalistic attempt at visualizing political data.

SQL server file initialization

Data and log files are initialized to overwrite any existing data left on the disk from previously deleted files. Data and log files are first initialized by filling the files with zeros when you perform one of the following operations:

• Create a database
• Add files, log or data, to an existing database
• Increase the size of an existing file (including autogrow operations)
• Restore a database or filegroup

Do you know C.R.A.P. when you see it?

If you popped by this blog, chances are that you work with BI or data analysis or just find visualization of data interesting. You probably see many visualizations everyday - perhaps you even make some of them yourself. But dealing with a visualization, how do you know if it contains C.R.A.P. or the opposite? That's todays topic.

Deadly delicious pie - the place vital information goes to die

Don't care about your data and message? Go cook up a pie - your audience will adore you and your work! Or will they - and should they? In todays post we will serve you some pie, discuss pros and cons of this chart type, and offer you a few tips on how to obtain a healthier diet.

How much space are you wasting?

A few weeks back I was visiting a client who asked me to write a script that could tell him the space used by write only indexes.

Enhancing the pattern by keeping text in check

Text is an indispensable helper when we make data visualizations, but we need to be careful not to let it steal the picture.

Network package size

We all know that network handling is very expensive, so when loading a large amount of data changing the network package size can improve the performance dramatically. By increasing the package size means that we will transport fewer but larger packages over the network.

Leveraging comparison in a stacked bar chart

Remaking charts has become increasingly popular around the web lately.

Enrich your Data Warehouse dimensions

As a Data Warehouse Consultant, I´m often asked the following by customers: “Is it possible to enrich our dimension data with some manually maintained data” and the answer is always “yeah, of course”. However, quite quickly the questions of:

- Who should input this data
- How do I inform that a new dimension value is available
- In which system should the user import this data
- And how can it been done in a user friendly manner

I have successfully used Master Data Services from SQL Server 2012 to manage this challenge.
Master Data Services offer an Excel plugin and a web application that makes it easy for business users to push data to a SQL Server. This tutorial will focus on the Excel plugin for pushing data.
This blog post will explain how you can push data from your SQL Server to your MDS implementation, thereby making it possible for the business user to enrich the data.

Are you wasting storage space?

Do you see tables taking up much more space than expected? And when looking at the table design and doing a little math numbers just don’t add up! I have seen issues so many times, where you have a simple little table with only a few thousand rows taking up GB’s of storage space. The case is more or less always the same, and that is what I’ll demonstrate in this blog post.

SQL Server trace flags

Normally I’m not a big fan of using trace flags, my advice is only to use these when it is absolutely necessary otherwise don’t.

Backup On-Premises SQL Server Databases to Azure Storage

With the release of SQL Server 2012 SP1 CU2, an enhancement to the BACKUP command has been added. Now the BACKUP command support “TO URL” when you specify a backup device. This gives you the option to use an Azure Storage account as destinations for your backups.

Filegroup confusion

Where did I put my Sales table?

Tired of crowded bars? The dot plot hits a sweet spot!

Don't drown the data - show it!

Far too often, we seem overly worried that our audience will not find our data interesting and entertaining. So what do we do? We dress up the data with a plethora of appealing and salient visual effects. Effects that, sadly, end up distorting and blurring the very essence of the message we were trying to communicate in the first place.