The trade-offs associated with low-code solutions

Low-code solutions often accelerate development and make tasks accessible to people who can't or don't want to write their own code. But it's important to remember that it's a trade-off. You are often trading decreased development and maintenance time for limited configuration options and minimal monitoring capabilities. Low-code solutions are great...until they aren't.

http://datasavvy.me/2025/03/24/the-trade-offs-associated-with-low-code-solutions/

Join me at the Microsoft Fabric Community Conference with a discount code

I'm excited to be speaking at the Microsoft Fabric Community Conference this year, which takes place March 31 through April 2 in Las Vegas, Nevada. I will be co-presenting 2 sessions with Kerry Kolosko and Shannon Lindsay as well as participating in some other data viz fun. You can find session descriptions below. The lineup for this conference looks fantastic whether you are a Fabric enthusiast or more focused on Power BI.

http://datasavvy.me/2025/02/20/join-me-at-the-microsoft-fabric-community-conference-with-a-discount-code/

Common Issues When Using Change Tracking for Data Warehouse Incremental Loads

I have a few clients that incrementally load tables from a SQL Server source into their data warehouse or lakehouse by using change tracking. Lately, they encountered some issues with changes to the configuration and the data in the source database, so I decided to share some things you can check before using change tracking as part of your ETL load or when troubleshooting your data load.

http://datasavvy.me/2025/01/30/common-issues-when-using-change-tracking-for-data-warehouse-incremental-loads/

This week's #Wow2025 #PowerBI exercise is a beginner-friendly one! Your challenge is to add an all/total bar in the middle of a bar chart.

https://workout-wednesday.com/pbi-2025-w05/

PBIX is in the Data Stories Gallery. Video coming soon.

Join us to start the year off right with a quick #PowerBI #DataViz exercise!

Workout Wednesday for Power BI 2025 Week 2: Ice Thickness Infographic with Core Visuals

https://workout-wednesday.com/pbi-2025-w02/

Replacing Images in PBIR Format Reports

With the PBIR format of Power BI reports, it's much easier to make report updates outside of Power BI Desktop. One thing you may want to do is to switch out an image in a report. Maybe you need to rebrand a report, updating some of the images (logos and background images). You could import the images or use image URLs with DAX, but that comes with its own problems.

http://datasavvy.me/2024/12/30/replacing-images-in-pbir-format-reports/

Some gems from this article:

Investigation Finds Jena Griswold and Her Office Violated State Security Protocols, Resulting in Password Leak
https://www.westword.com/news/colorado-official-violated-security-protocols-leading-to-leak-report-22748944

1. The office used to keep its voting systems inventory, including equipment passwords, in a Microsoft Access database. But in August 2021, a former employee responsible for maintaining the inventory recommended that it be migrated into an Excel file instead.

2. In the Excel file, the former employee created hidden tabs that she used as "scratch paper" to help clean up the inventory on the visible tabs, says the report, whose authors interviewed past and present employees. The hidden tabs included the passwords. The former employee "never told anyone that there were hidden (tabs) in the" file, as they did not "serve any team-wide purpose," the report notes.

3. No one on the VS Team appeared to know that (tabs) could be hidden.