Blog

SQL Saturday Part 2: Learning About Microsoft Fabric 

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Microsoft Fabric

I’ve been digging into Microsoft Fabric recently – well overdue, since it was first released about a year ago. At the recent SQL Saturday Atlanta event I attended in early February 2024, I took the opportunity to learn from the sessions and speakers that were discussing aspects of Fabric. Shabnam Watson, John Kerski, Stephanie Bruno, and Stacey Rudoy were some of the speakers I learned from. They showed me many other resources for learning more about Fabric, including a great blog by Sandeep Pawar, also known as https://fabric.guru/    I’ve been thinking about some of my clients and how Imaginet has architected their data analytics ecosystems, or how I might … Read more

My Trip to SQL Saturday Atlanta (BI Edition): Part 1 

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SQL Saturday

Recently, I had the opportunity to attend SQL Saturday Atlanta (BI edition), a free annual event for data professionals and enthusiasts held in Alpharetta Georgia. I spoke at this conference a year ago, and I was glad to have one of my abstracts selected so I could return this year.   SQL Saturdays are a great opportunity for me to volunteer and give back to the community with my experience, but also for me to learn from others. New speakers are encouraged, and the Data Speaker Community is a worldwide family of friends where everyone is welcomed. Keep your eye on https://sqlsaturday.com/ for events near you or calls for speaker … Read more

Enabling BitLocker Encryption with Microsoft Intune 

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Enabling Bitlocker

In today’s data-driven world, safeguarding sensitive information is paramount, especially with the increase in remote work following the pandemic and the rise in cyber threats. BitLocker, a robust encryption tool, plays a pivotal role in protecting your data from unauthorized access. In this blog post, we’ll explore the significance of enabling BitLocker, utilizing Microsoft Intune for deployment, and important information before implementation.  Why BitLocker Matters BitLocker is a built-in encryption feature in Microsoft Windows, designed to strengthen data security by encrypting disk volumes on devices like laptops and desktops. This encryption serves as a safeguard, ensuring that even in cases of device loss or theft, the data remains protected and … Read more

Primary Constructors (C# 12 Syntactic Sugar): A Guide 

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Primary Constructors

With the introduction of .Net8 and C#12 in November of 2023, there were many significant changes to .NET and C#. One such feature in C#12 is the concept of a Primary Constructor. A Primary constructor replaces a class constructor with parameters on the class. The parameters for the constructor are available anywhere in the body of the class.   With Primary Constructor:  It is important to note that the class parameters are not fields of the class. The following code will not compile if used in SimpleClass, as foo and bar are not available on “this”.  Using a Primary Constructor can significantly improve the readability of your code, as it does away with a lot … Read more

5 Software Development Trends for 2024 

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Software Development Trends

In the last few years, we have witnessed unprecedented changes and advancements in technology, which have impacted the world of software development. These changes have presented organizations with additional opportunities and have allowed them to achieve new successes. The ever-changing world of technology can be difficult to keep up with. Trends change quickly and new products and solutions are consistently introduced. We have compiled 5 software development trends to help you understand what to keep an eye on in 2024.   Artificial Intelligence Explosion  Artificial intelligence is opening doors for software development both in enabling efficient work experience for developers through tools like CoPilot, and by augmenting the applications themselves. AI … Read more

Microsoft Fabric: OneLake Provides a Unified Data Lake  

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Microsoft Fabric

Have you been hearing the buzz about Microsoft Fabric?   The Data Engineering and Business Intelligence team at Imaginet has been watching with interest the development of Fabric since it was announced in March 2023. As data professionals with deep expertise in the Microsoft stack of data analytics products, we’ve already been using many of the pieces of Fabric and we’re excited to see how they are evolving.  Microsoft Fabric brings together several data products into a more unified experience, including Azure Synapse for querying data sources, Azure Data Factory for performing ETL processes (Extract, Transform, Load), and Power BI for showing data in dashboard or paginated forms. These products have … Read more

Microsoft Loop: Seamless Co-Working in One Place

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Microsoft Loop

Years ago, Microsoft introduced digital collaboration with MS Word, Excel, Power Point, Outlook, and most significantly, MS Teams. Microsoft continues to push the boundaries with its innovations that reshape the way we work and communicate. Recently, Microsoft rolled out The Loop – a new application that will provide further organizational connectivity. Microsoft Loop (or Loop) was specifically designed to redefine how an organization’s teams collaborate.  Imagine your teams, tasks, and content all being centralized in one place – that is Microsoft Loop! It is made up of workspaces, pages, and components that make it a hub for seamless content creation and collaboration.  To highlight some of the exciting features of … Read more

Different Selection of .net Data Structure Has a Positive Impact on Performance 

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.net Data Structure

Today, programmers often fail to consider the performance impact of certain programming choices. Computers have, and continue to, advance and their seemingly unlimited memory results in a programmer’s lack of programming considerations. In one of my recent projects, I had to search reference data from multiple large lists of data (between 500 – 4000 entries in each list) from a numeric ID field in another large list of objects. In this blog, I will explore the positive impacts a different selection of .net data structure can have on performance.    Adopting the standard naive approach of storing the reference data in a List and then using a LINQ query to … Read more

Benefits of Power BI: Unlocking Your Data’s Potential 

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Your organization’s data can be a valuable tool for making informed business decisions. Quality data can assist in understanding customer needs, increase employee satisfaction, provide insights as to the effectiveness of certain processes, and more. Harnessing the power of your data is crucial, yet often organizations engage in ineffective data collection practices. The benefits of Power BI are numerous and can easily provide data insights that may currently be unrealized.   What is Power BI?  Power BI is a Microsoft solution that turns your organization’s data into visually engaging and interactive reports. Power BI also lets you connect multiple data sources and automates processes, eliminating manual work.   Benefits of Power BI  … Read more

Unlocking Sales Insights with Salesforce and Power BI

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Salesforce is a powerful Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platform that empowers organizations to streamline every aspect of the customer journey. It provides tools for managing leads, opportunities, and customer accounts, among many other functions. Despite there being vast amounts of data within Salesforce, it can be difficult to transform it into actionable insights. This is why integrating Salesforce with Power BI can be a game-changing move for your organization. In this blog, we will discuss the steps involved in transforming your Salesforce data into actionable insights with Power BI – including how to integrate Salesforce with Power BI, how to build your data model, as well as provide example visualizations … Read more