Power BI Terms - Snack 2

Did you get your homework done?  When you accessed Power BI last time, I asked you to poke around.  Did you discover anything interesting?

Before we really dive in, there are a couple of high-level terms you should be familiar with, as they relate to Power BI.

Report - An interactive collection of visualizations enabling analysis and insights, based on a Semantic Model.

Dashboard - A single-page, interactive canvas enabling a high-level overview of your data through single visualizations that live in a Report, or even an entire Report page.

App - A collection of dashboards, reports, datasets, and other Power BI content created and shared through a single access point.

Semantic Model - the logical layer that represents the structure and meaning of the data within a specific context. It captures the relationships, transformations, and calculations needed to create reports and dashboards. 

Workspace - A collaborative space where a group of folks can work together on dashboards, reports, datasets, and other content.

Essentially, a Semantic Model defines a Report, whose visualizations may live in a Dashboard, a collection of all may reside within an App.  These reports and models may also live in a collaborative workspace or only in your own individual workspace.

Your homework.  Remember this forever.

Celery Salad Base

Found this base somewhere and modified it slightly.  Turned out rather nicely.

1/4 Cup of Sweet Onion

1/8 Cup of Lemon Juice

2 tablespoons Olive Oil

1/4 teaspoon of salt

1/2 teaspoon of pepper

1/3 cup of shredded Parmesan

A bunch of celery

1. Mince the onion.  
2. Slice celery 1/4 inch.
3. Except for the celery, mix it all together.  
4. Toss the celery in the mixture.

Add other veggies for fun.  This time, I added a small zucchini.

Bad Luck Hills Fort

Among the more remarkable snapshots-in-time sits high on a bluff along the Missouri River on the eastern outskirts of Kansas City in the small town of Sibley.  A good portion of the backstory associated with this site is familiar to nearly everyone, while other parts of its history remain obscured.

These "Bad Luck Hills," as they were once known, look out across the Missouri River valley just above the confluence of Beasley Creek and the Missouri River.  It is a uniquely defensible, yet accessible position offering opportunities in overland and water-born trade from a secure location.

One of the leading explorers associated with The Corps of Volunteers for Northwestern Discovery, otherwise known as the  Lewis & Clark Expedition, landed upon this spot in June of 1804.  William Clark and the band of explorers spent the weekend here plagued by gnats, ticks and mosquitos, as well as being mired in mud a good portion of that time.  It is surprising he held any inclination to return.

Clark held onto memory of the distinctly favorable location more so than the aggravations encountered there, returned to the site with other government appointees, and set about establishing Fort Osage in 1808.  The military garrison and successful government factory served the region for another 20 years before private fur traders finally demanded closure of this competition.

Local settlers salvaged lumber and other parts from the shuttered fort to develop the surrounding community, nearly erasing it from history. Oral tradition, research, and persistent documentation kept the memory alive though, and the 1940's brought it back to life through a massive restoration effort.  

The sixties opened the door to a more detailed history of the area that included recognition of those that had come before.  Excavations uncovered evidence of human habitation by the Osage tribe, as well as the Hopewell culture that populated the region from around 200 BCE to 500 CE.

As more is learned about the site, it continues to demonstrate an interesting display of relatively consistent land use in one location, though by distinctly different cultures.  Thoughtfully arranged specimens and memoirs on display lead one through the time before man into that of the "Sky People," through westward expansion, and into the modern day.  It is a undoubtedly a unique National Historic Landmark worthy of an afternoon of exploration.

...

further reading

Day by Day - June 23, 1804

Discover Lewis & Clark

Fort Osage
National Park Service

Fort Osage National Historic Landmark

National Landmark Site

Fort Osage

Historic Sibley, MO

Starting off with Power BI Online - Snack 1

If access is enabled to Power BI, you have a relatively simple and powerful data tool at your disposal.  

Indeed personally, I have found it to be more intuitive and flexible than Excel, enabling a variety of automation possibilities, pairing of data, as well as distribution of data and reports from the simplest variety to the most complex.

Over the course of however long it takes, I hope to offer up some snack-size pieces that walk through getting started in Power BI.  This will be within the scope of using the Power BI service, also known as Power BI Online.

A license is needed, or access through a trial version, which costs nothing to sign up.  It will likely prove insufficient for this series though.  Lacking that essential piece, the free desktop version is available, to which these instructions can easily be adapted.

Today's snack-size piece is simply about the platform we will use for this.

1. Visit the following link and login > https://app.powerbi.com
1. It should look similar to the screenshot below.
1. Not exactly.
1. Similar.  Microsoft changes things all the time, but the general screen layout has not change significantly in the last couple of years.
2. Poke around in there.  
3. See what there is to see. 
1. You cannot break anything.  
1. Do not be afraid to push buttons.  It is, after all, kind of what Power BI reports are all about, bringing a level of interactivity to otherwise boring, two-dimensional reports, enabling consumers to more quickly understand their data.

That is all I have for now; we can connect again later.  Go play! See if you can break it!

Lake Morning Platte Hikes

Enjoyed an opportunity to escape the drudgery for a couple of hours this morning and take a look at a couple of trails that I had not yet seen.  A beautiful sunny and crisp 15° C morning found the first, Green Hills of Platte Wildlife Preserve, generally okay. Half of the trail was mostly a wide gravel path, with the second half of the trail winding through a dense forest and a collection of poison ivy and ticks, within earshot of passing traffic.  I emerged unscathed and will probably have another look here once everything dies again.

The second trail was one that I had driven by several times, though had not had a chance to stop, being urgently on my way to another destination.  Charlotte Sawyers Nature Area offered a better opportunity to get away from civilization.  Voices from a neighboring farm could be heard along with random air traffic and that was about it.  It was little more than a mowed path around an overgrown field but served the purpose.  It offered space for quiet contemplation.

Second Grade Zoo Field Trip

 

An invitation to join in a field trip to the zoo, only charged with leading a couple around the massive complete, led to capturing a few new aspects of this particular location. The new aquarium is an intriguing new addition and left my second-grade troupe amazed.  It was definitely their top pick for the day.

Mother's Day Unity

 

Prior to other festivities planned for the afternoon, we made a brief journey out to the garden at Unity Village for Mother's Day.  There is some intriguing architecture loitering about the place, and quite an array of fountains and roses.  We may need to make another trip go get a closer look at other aspects of this location.

Tao Verse 5

Heaven and Earth have no preference.