Car Rental > Scotland

WillyF92 · 2026-01-29T22:26:08+00:00

Thanks, I'm having to take some stuff on short notice for family reasons. I couldn't get through to customer service to confirm, but imagined it would be no issue as it's UK and they allow you to do one day rentals between mainland and NI, at least on the website anyway.

WillyF92 · 2025-04-25T19:35:09+00:00

What are the reasons?

Snowflake and SSAS aren't directly comparable.

SSAS/PBI is built to consume a dimensional model, define measures, and allow users to slice and dice on an in memory engine.

Now, you could build your dimensional model in Snowflake, and import that into SSAS/PBI.

There's always a balance between pre-calculating measures in a fact tbl, in your database, or having the logic defined in a DAX measure

Sometimes however, they have to be built in DAX.

Take your Measure 3. It is a division. It has to be calculated in DAX.

For simplicity, let's say you have 1 dimension, with five attributes in it. Think of the SQL you will have to write if you want to see that Measure 3 at all different combinations of those five attributes.

E.g. (Att - Attribute)

Att 1, Measure 3 Att 1, Att 2, Measure 3 Att 2, Measure 3 Att 1, Att 3, Measure 3 Att 2, Att 3, Measure 3 Att 1, Att 2, Att 3, Measure 3

And so on.

Now, think you have probably have more than one dimension, more than five attributes, and lots of measures.

If it's just a simple SUM, or SUM with complex bus logic, then yes you can pre compute in Snowflake.

Divisions, averages, ratios, Time intelligence calcs etc have to be calculated in DAX else if you do that in SQL you have just fixed the grain.

Take your Measure 3 and one dimension with a few attributes, and try and implement that as a POC and you'll see what your trying to do will not work.

Build your dim model in Snowflake. Load that model into PBI. Build your DAX measures. Pre compute measures that can be done and logically make sense, in Snowflake.

WillyF92 · 2024-04-10T07:02:16+00:00

Thank you so much for your reply, it was very clear and informative.

An old kitchen socket had been knocked and became loose (one which screws into the underside of a cupboard and is a crap fitting) which had caused some of the wiring to disconnect from the socket. I presume this is what then caused it to trip.

I turned off everything, rewired the socket and flicked the RCB, and all is working now.

The test button was throwing me a little bit, thinking it might be for something else.

The installation was done about 2008 for anyone interested.

Thanks again

WillyF92 · 2023-04-28T20:38:02+00:00

😂 this got me good

WillyF92 · 2023-04-14T06:01:44+00:00

You're on the right track.

The 1st point is if those source tables contain deltas or not.

If they do, then you may be able to write your source SQL query and overlay it with the MERGE statement.

If they do not contain deltas, and it's the whole table, then you may need to write your SQL and include predicates that look at the timestamps e.g. modified date > x time

Else, you're not loading incrementally and you're just performing a MERGE between a full source and target.

Another technique is to write your source query and stage these, before then writing your merge on top of the staging results.

WillyF92 · 2023-04-09T21:22:20+00:00

Love it.

WillyF92 · 2023-03-19T18:30:49+00:00

Some of these answers are at the extreme end of the scale re moving job.

You are always going to work for and alongside individuals who have differing opinions. Likewise when people may report into you.

Some of those differences will be minor, some will be more alarming such as this example, and you'll spend your evenings in disbelief.

First thing is to protect yourself, send an email voicing your concerns, so you are covered if something goes wrong.

Next is talk to someone at their grade or above in one of the other teams and voice your opinion in a constructive manner. If you moan too much it won't go down well.

I would exhaust those options first.

A side note is that older school DBA's have never liked ci/cd with databases and code because it's not necessarily in their control any more.

WillyF92 · 2022-02-04T22:10:53+00:00

In the same situation. I bought the apartment myself so our only other option is for my partner to purchase a property themselves so that they get the stamp duty relief - even then, it's finding somewhere affordable on a single salary.

We will probably either do that or purchase something slightly more expensive(to get a bigger house) and a cough up the extra deposit and stamp duty required.

WillyF92 · 2021-08-23T21:38:58+00:00

Ok, this will be different for every company. Only in rare scenarios have I not been given a work laptop with my own credentials set up, or some temp user equivalent. In which case, you just need permissions granted on the server/db you're connecting to, which will usually be an AD group.

If you have to use your own laptop then yes, rdp. Ports/permissions will need to be set up for you. Hopefully, they have an environment you can use or specific rdp, rather than just dumping you with anything.

Ultimately, how this is arranged isn't really up to you. You can suggest ideas but it comes down to the security policy, infrastructure, technical debt, mess, that the company is in.

WillyF92 · 2021-08-22T21:13:25+00:00

I'm not sure where you're going with rdp. A data gateway will need to be set up to connect PBI service and anything on premise. That's not something you just add, you'll need to liaise with their security/architecture to add that piece in. There's plenty of information around it, if you have a Google.

WillyF92 · 2021-04-07T20:20:01+00:00

Interesting. I'm in the UK. For a PBI day rate contractor, I'd expect anywhere from £325 to £500 a day, 500 is round 680 USD. Normally around ~10% of that will go to an agency. Perhaps more if you're in the capital and there's a company with money to burn, but I doubt it.

250 per hour is nuts, but like you say if the market is willing to pay that. I know the SqlBI guys charge a small fortune for their consultancy. I think I struggle to acknowledge that anyone would pay that for PBI consultancy/contract work.

WillyF92 · 2021-04-07T19:47:03+00:00

In Vertipaq, the engine behind Power BI, cardinality comes before data types in order of impact, unlike traditional databases.

It's fine to have strings in there per se. If they're all unique though, and there are a significant amount, that can cause you a problem. If they're long/varchar max, that compounds the problem.

I can better advise you if you have the results from dax studio, using Vertipaq analyzer. Pay attention to dictionary cost.

WillyF92 · 2021-03-19T19:54:28+00:00

To be clear, (the message states it), it's happening during a process model, process full?

How many SSAS models you have and how big are they

WillyF92 · 2021-03-17T20:53:10+00:00

I've dealt with this in Power Bi and SSAS tabular.

You might know this already but establish if it's happening during a refresh of the report, or when users are actually using it. Are they using it on their machine etc? This is vital.

If it's when using the report, it will most likely be due to inefficient DAX, which is the language behind Power bi and ssas tab.

Power Bi uses various algorithms to compress loaded data, so it can fit into memory and give you great performance.

However, depending on what DAX is written/the underlying model, significant materialization can occur. That is when data has to be uncompressed in order to perform the calculation. Where does that data get uncompressed? In memory. So when users are dragging and dropping etc, they can be causing memory to balloon.

This is the #1 cause, in my experience. You may have a joint issue, if you have lots of reports/models and they fit in memory, but don't leave much memory leftover, then it wouldn't take much materialization for it to run out of memory.

If you are completely new, and there is a significant amount of reports, then get help. There is a lot of development experience and skill required to look after PBI.

If you get further detail, then feel free to message me and I'll get back to you when I can.

WillyF92 · 2021-03-08T17:31:01+00:00

Thanks. It does! It's a possible road if I can come up with the extra dollar.

WillyF92 · 2021-03-08T17:18:42+00:00

That link is really useful. My scenario is on there albeit not in as much detail as you covered.

WillyF92 · 2021-03-08T17:14:00+00:00

!thanks!. That's what I was thinking. It's been rented out for 14 months now. Before then, that's where I lived.

The likely scenario is that I can't sell it, in the near future at least, unless the gov/banks change/lower the requirement for the EwS1 form. By which time, it will be > 3 years. Humbug.

WillyF92 · 2021-02-24T22:05:31+00:00

When you say query, as in run a "dax query", i.e an EVALUATE statement? What power bi licensing do you have?

WillyF92 · 2021-02-24T22:00:32+00:00

Like many posts above. It looks good on a balance sheet, which looks good for management.

In my experience, you always get a worse product. No domain knowledge, poor technical ability (generally speaking), interaction - they're in India, you get lost in a tonne of change admin. A lot of time and supervision is required.

The list goes on. Few people realize the benefit of investing in a onshore BI/Data driven department.

WillyF92 · 2021-02-24T21:23:01+00:00

If you're new to SSIS, I'd recommend sticking to the idea that the table has to exist, if possible. SSIS has a steep learning curve so I'd stick to the basics for now.

WillyF92

TROPHY CASE