SQL Server

New Application Development Projects Enhance Resource Management 

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A telecommunications organization contacted Imaginet for assistance on 2 new application development projects. The first was a portfolio tracker, and the second was an office furniture ordering application.    Portfolio Tracker    The portfolio tracker we built for our client tracks and manages the various budgets they have across different departments. Our client has several districts and district managers, and they needed a way to track budgets across these districts and departments. Another aspect of the portfolio tracker is managing tech deployments within the organization. For example, if a boardroom needs a new projector (or other tech) they’ll go through a process to request the needed technology. Our tool allows for the … Read more

Data Collection Upgrade Reduces Technical Debt & Modernizes Data Reports

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A well-known consumer packaged goods (CPG) company specializing in pet food asked Imaginet to perform maintenance on their existing data collection processes. We work in a staff augmentation role for this client and do ongoing work for them. Their data departments are divided into different business areas (we will refer to them as teams). On this project, we were working with two of their teams. Both teams required general maintenance and updates to their data collection tools – essentially a data collection upgrade. Team 1: Their primary focus is collecting and processing data about pet foods and products (nutritional claims they make, calories, ingredients, product history, etc.). This process to … Read more

Power BI Data Model Builds Better and More Accurate Reports

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A major Canadian University had contacted Imaginet because they needed reports built on top of an existing data warehouse. This is a long-term client of Imaginet’s, and we had previously built a data warehouse for another department within the organization. Much of the work for this project was about defining the semantic data model on top of the data warehouse and then building the reports on it.   Before they had a data warehouse, they had multiple applications that were reporting data separately. Since the implementation of the data warehouse, the client wanted to use Power BI as a standard enterprise reporting portal.   Our Solution  We started with creating views in … Read more

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

Application Update Leads to Improved Performance and Functionality

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A provider of real estate advisory services contacted Imaginet to assist them with an application we had previously developed for them. Most of the application was developed using .Net framework 4.8, which is now outdated. The application’s front end was developed with version 8, but now Angular 16 is the most updated and recent version. An application update would improve the overall use, performance, security, and functionality of the application itself.   Our Solution  The application required an update so it would use .Net core and Angular 16 as the frontend. The client also requested other fixes that would improve the performance, such as moving some data processing from the Angular … Read more

Power BI Reports & DevOps Component Improves Data Quality

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A major Canadian University had been experiencing issues with discrepancies in their data reports. They had an existing data warehouse across the entire organization, but the data quality was poor and inaccurate. Therefore, they were in need of a solution that could provide overall improved data quality. The client had expressed their desire to keep the data warehouse currently in place. We determined that data collected and presented in Power BI reports would satisfy the client’s data needs.   What We Did: Power BI  We started by doing work in Power BI that allowed the reports to match up with their evaluation criteria, which involved working heavily in SQL. We then … Read more

Centralized Data Reporting Reduces Wait Times and Improves Reliability

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A well-known consumer packaged goods (CPG) company specializing in pet food contacted Imaginet because the data for their health and safety reporting was slow and failing to load properly. They were working with an online platform called Evotix and pulling data from a web URL to build reports. Additionally, they have numerous factories and therefore have high volumes of data to capture. Each of the factories was attempting to take the data from the Evotix platform to build reports but the web URL couldn’t handle many factories requesting large datasets concurrently and was consequently unreliable. They were in need of a centralized data repository, so all their data could be accessible … Read more

Using Query Store to Analyze Database Performance

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SQL Server 2016 (13.x), Azure SQL Database Azure SQL, Managed Instance, Azure Synapse Analytics (dedicated SQL pool only)

“Maximize your database performance with Imaginet’s latest blog on using Query Store to analyze database performance. Learn how Query Store can help you monitor and analyze query performance, diagnose performance issues and improve database performance. Get insights on the benefits and limitations of Query Store, and take your database performance to the next level. Read Imaginet’s expert guide now!”

5 Lessons Learned With SQL Always Encrypted

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SQL Server 2016 (13.x), Azure SQL Database Azure SQL, Managed Instance, Azure Synapse Analytics (dedicated SQL pool only)

Microsoft introduced Always Encrypted with SQL Server 2016 as an approach to encrypting data at rest and in transit to protect personally identifiable information and financial transactions. Always Encrypted works by encrypting the data on the client side and hiding the encryption keys from the server. Without explicit permission and configuration, even database administrators cannot read the information stored in an encrypted column. This is obviously a significant step forward in security and allows users to confidently store information knowing only they control who can see it, whether it is in the cloud or on-premise.