Aveek Das

Author
Recent Posts

Aveek is an experienced Data and Analytics Engineer, currently working in Dublin, Ireland. His main areas of technical interest include SQL Server, SSIS/ETL, SSAS, Python, Big Data tools like Apache Spark, Kafka, and cloud technologies such as AWS/Amazon and Azure.

He is a prolific author, with over 100 articles published on various technical blogs, including his own blog, and a frequent contributor to different technical forums.

In his leisure time, he enjoys amateur photography mostly street imagery and still life. Some glimpses of his work can be found on Instagram. You can also find him on LinkedIn

View all posts by Aveek Das

An introduction to Serverless Applications

June 25, 2020 by Aveek Das

In this article, I am going to describe what are serverless applications and how are these developed. I will also introduce the concepts of serverless computing and how to deploy one using Azure Functions. This article is targeted towards most of the data professionals who want to gain some basic knowledge of serverless applications and the underlying architecture and cloud computing. In recent times, cloud computing has become one of the most important domains for many big organizations and it has thus become essential for all to have some basic information on the same.

Getting started with Amazon QuickSight

June 18, 2020 by Aveek Das

In this article, I am going to introduce Amazon QuickSight and how to visualize data using it. Amazon QuickSight is a data visualization tool offered by Amazon hosted on AWS and is available across multiple locations. As per the statement provided on the official website it says: “Amazon QuickSight is a fast, cloud-powered business intelligence service that makes it easy to deliver insights to everyone in your organization.” Using QuickSight, users can create different analyses and then integrate those in a dashboard and share them with people within the organization.

Getting started with parameterized Power BI reports

June 16, 2020 by Aveek Das

In this article, I am going to explain how we can develop parameterized Power BI reports locally and then migrate the same report across multiple environments, like development, QA, and production. Parameterized Power BI reports are essential because we can use the same report to develop the charts and the KPIs and then provide the same report to the QA who will test it on a separate environment and finally when the testing is completed, it can then maybe provided to an administrator who can publish it to the production workspace.

Calling an AWS Lambda function from another Lambda function

June 9, 2020 by Aveek Das

In this article, I am going to explain how to create an AWS Lambda function and then call this function from another Lambda function within the same region. This is a useful scenario in which we may need to execute a second lambda function based on the outcome of some previous logic. Another scenario may be to execute a second lambda function several times by using different parameters.

Getting started with AWS Toolkit for Visual Studio Code

June 8, 2020 by Aveek Das

In this article, I am going to explain how to start using the AWS Toolkit for Visual Studio Code to develop serverless functions locally. Serverless applications or functions gives us the ability to develop, test and execute code in the cloud without having to worry about the underlying infrastructure. These applications are scalable which means we can easily increase or decrease the resources consumed by them. AWS Toolkit for Visual Studio Code is an extension available for Visual Studio Code using which we can directly communicate with the resources on Amazon within the code editor.

Using a Date Dimension Table in Power BI

June 5, 2020 by Aveek Das

In this article, I am going to describe how to use a date dimension table in Power BI. Using a date dimension table becomes extremely important while visualizing facts and figures over some time in the calendar. Sometimes it is possible that we do not have the continuous date values in our dataset that we are trying to work upon.

Exploring actions and tasks in the SQLPackage Utility

June 4, 2020 by Aveek Das

In this article, I am going to explain in detail about actions and tasks in the SQLPackage Utility. In my previous article, I have explained the overview of the SQLPackage utility. The SQLPackage utility is a command-line utility tool provided by Microsoft to automate SQL Server database deployments. Since this utility is cross-platform, you can easily install it on any operating system of your choice. SQLPackage actions are the types of functions that we can achieve with this utility. You can install this utility directly on any production server and it can be used as is. You can find more information about this utility and SQLPackage actions from the official documentation from Microsoft.

A quick overview of the Microsoft Power Platform

June 2, 2020 by Aveek Das

In this article, I am going to explain the various products offered by the Microsoft Power Platform. Microsoft Power Platform is a group of products offered by Microsoft to develop and build complex business solutions, analyze, and draw data visualizations, automate a business process, or build virtual agents for communication. All these products offer a platform in which no code is required to build the applications. These products are in the form of simple GUI which can be used by any business users or developers, thus helping to reduce the need for IT in the organization.

Overview of the Grafana Dashboard with SQL

June 2, 2020 by Aveek Das

In this article, I am going to demonstrate how to set up Grafana Dashboard for real-time analytics or data monitoring purposes. Grafana is an open-source, cross-platform analytics service tool that can be used to fetch data from several data sources, and then the data can be visualized in a much intuitive way in the form of bars and graphs. This is quite a useful feature for the DevOps or the IT team as it can make their job easier to find abnormalities or spikes in the production environment by observing the logs generated.

Getting Started with the SQLPackage Utility

May 28, 2020 by Aveek Das

In this article, I’m going to explain in detail about the SQLPackage utility that is provided by Microsoft in order to automate database deployments. In my previous article regarding Data-Tier Applications in SQL Server, I have mentioned how to create a DACPAC and a BACPAC file from an existing SQL Server Database. The underlying technology behind creating the DACPAC and the BACPAC files is the SQLPackage utility, which helps to create those files.

How to configure an Amazon RDS environment for MySQL

May 26, 2020 by Aveek Das

In this article, I am going to explain how to configure the RDS MySQL Environment in AWS. RDS is the Relational Database Service Available from the Amazon which enables us to spin up any relational database instance without having to worry about the infrastructure behind it. Users can connect to this instance very easily and start building database applications with ease. This article will focus more on how to configure the RDS MySQL Environment and not much on the MySQL details.

Programmatic access to Power BI PowerShell commandlets

May 25, 2020 by Aveek Das

In this article, I am going to demonstrate how to access the Power BI PowerShell commandlets. In the previous article in this series, we discussed how to programmatically access the Power BI Service using the REST APIs available. PowerShell is one of the most frequently used and preferred ways of automating monotonous manual jobs and scripting those. PowerShell comes integrated with Windows, so it can be easily used from any Windows machine.

Working with Azure SQL databases using Azure CLI 2.0

May 22, 2020 by Aveek Das

In my previous article, Getting started with Azure CLI 2.0, I have explained how to get started with the Azure CLI 2.0. I have also explained how to install it on a local machine and demonstrated a few commands. In this article, I’m going to explain how to create a SQL Database using Azure CLI 2.0. Further, in the later part of the article, I’ll also show how to create a backup of the SQL Database using Azure CLI. Creating a SQL Database using the Azure CLI helps us to get things automated and removes the error-prone manual creation of the databases and backups.

How to access Power BI REST APIs programmatically

May 19, 2020 by Aveek Das

In this article, I am going to explain how to use the Power BI REST API to programmatically access the Power BI Service features. I’ll also discuss the basis of REST API and how to use the APIs using Postman. Using the Power BI REST API, you can programmatically manage the administrative services like getting a list of dashboards and workspaces, refreshing a dataset, copying a dashboard from one workspace to another, and so on.

Getting started with Azure CLI 2.0

May 12, 2020 by Aveek Das

In this article, we are going to understand what Azure CLI is and how to work with it. For the purpose of this article, we will take the version 2.0 to demonstrate the features and functionalities. The Azure CLI, as the name suggests is a cross- platform and open-source command-line tool that we can use to create or manage resources in the Azure Portal. This tool gives us the ability to issue commands right from the windows command prompt and deal with the Azure resources. Since this tool is a cross-platform, that means the users can easily install the utility on Windows, Linux or Mac OS and still work with the same set of commands without making any changes.

An introduction to Data-Tier applications in SQL Server

April 29, 2020 by Aveek Das

In this article, I’m going to introduce the data-tier applications in SQL Server. As the official documentation from Microsoft says – “Data-tier applications in SQL Server are a logical entity that can be used to develop and manage most of the SQL Server objects like tables, views, stored procedures, functions etc. as a self-contained package“. Essentially, what that means is it is a component of SQL Server, using which we can develop, build, test and deploy databases for SQL Server just like we can do for any other web or desktop applications.

An overview of ETL and ELT architecture

April 21, 2020 by Aveek Das

This article explains what the basic features and differences between ETL and ELT are. I’m also going to explain in detail what an ELT pipeline is and a relevant architecture for the same in Azure. So far, we have come a long way dealing with ETL tools which basically are Extract, Transformation and Load technique used in populating a data warehouse. ELT, on the other hand, is another way to load data into a warehouse that implements the process of Extract, Load and Transform.

Calculate Moving Averages in SQL, Power BI and MS Excel

April 21, 2020 by Aveek Das

In this article, I’m going to talk in detail about the moving average in SQL and how to find out the same in Power BI and Excel. This might be a new topic for many newbies who have started out in this field, but I’m sure this will help anyone who is trying to work on smoothing averages in SQL or in Power BI.

Configuring RDS environment in AWS for SQL Server

April 16, 2020 by Aveek Das

In this article, I’m going to explain how to configure an RDS Environment in Amazon Web Services (AWS) for SQL Server. Amazon RDS, also known as the Amazon Relational Database Service, is a Database-as-a-Service offered by Amazon. This enables us to create an instance of a relational database in RDS including many databases like SQL Server, MySQL, PostgreSQL etc. The entire hosting is managed by AWS, so there is no worry to maintain any on-premises data center or infrastructure from the customer’s end.

Introduction to Row-Level Security in Power BI

April 15, 2020 by Aveek Das

Analyzing data with Power BI has always been fascinating to me. With ever-growing data comes more risk, and hence more security is needed. In this article, I am going to introduce what row-level security in Power BI is and how does it work. I’ll also demonstrate in detail how to implement the same in Power BI Desktop. Later, we will also discuss how to implement this row-level security in Power BI service as well. To learn about row-level security in SQL Server, please have a look at my previous article, where I have explained how to implement the same.

An overview of Chart Types in Power BI

April 9, 2020 by Aveek Das

In this article, I am going to give an overview of the most widely used chart types in Power BI. Power BI, as everyone might be aware, is one of the SaaS offerings from Microsoft in the field of BI and Analytics. It provides a very intuitive way for non-technical users to do analyses and create reports on their own without having to rely on a technical team. One of the main purposes of Microsoft behind Power BI is to promote self-service BI and it is one of the BI tools in the market with a comparatively lower learning curve as there are many similarities compared to Microsoft Excel.

How to deploy SSAS cubes

April 9, 2020 by Aveek Das

In this article, I’m going to discuss the different ways in which we can deploy SSAS cubes. SSAS or SQL Server Analysis Services is an enterprise-grade analytical data engine which helps business to create semantic models that can be used for reporting and making better decisions. The semantic layer created by SSAS can be accessed by client tools like Power BI, or Excel and reports can be prepared from thereon. SSAS comes with a few different versions, which are as follows.

Warnings in SSAS Cubes

April 3, 2020 by Aveek Das

In this article, I’m going to list out some of the most common warnings we encounter while developing SSAS Cubes and the reason for those warnings. As you are aware, SSAS cubes are developed using the SQL Server Data Tools (SSDT) for Analysis Services (Visual Studio), all the examples will be taken from Visual Studio 2017 only.

Dynamic Pivot Tables in SQL Server

April 2, 2020 by Aveek Das

In this article, I am going to explain how we can create a dynamic pivot table in SQL Server. Pivot tables are a piece of summarized information that is generated from a large underlying dataset. It is generally used to report on specific dimensions from the vast datasets. Essentially, the user can convert rows into columns. This gives the users the ability to transpose columns from a SQL Server table easily and create reports as per the requirements.

Understanding Dynamic Data Masking in SQL Server

April 2, 2020 by Aveek Das

In this article, I’m going to explain the Dynamic Data Masking feature in SQL Server. As it goes by the name, Dynamic Data Masking is one of the security features that was introduced in SQL Server 2016. In an ever-growing digital era, the security of ones’ data has become one of the most important and expensive deals. Everyone expects their data to be protected as their own asset and like to treat it with the highest efficiency possible.