The 2016 edition of the Belgian SQL Server Days is over. It was a blast – as usual – and it was very nice meeting up with the #sqlfamily again. I had a session about the new features in SSRS 2016. I was so excited that I could do a full hour session on Reporting Services’ new features. I had to wait only like 7 years to be able to do so. Anyway, the session went okay and there weren’t that many questions. I always assume that’s because I did a kickass job at explaining stuff, if there are no questions

You can find the slides from my presentation on Docs.com:

All of the demos are turned into MSSQLTips.com articles, so you can find more information about them over there.

I also attended some other sessions:

• The SSIS design patterns precon by Matt Masson. It was really great meeting up with Matt. He has been in a lot of Microsoft teams: SSIS, MDS, DQS and Power Query. He did a solid precon, but at the end I kind of lost my interest (I already read the book by Matt and Andy Leonard about SSIS Design Patterns, so I already knew most of the stuff). Once Matt mentioned XML patterns, it was time to pack it up I did learn some interesting nuggets, like for example how the SSIS data flow treats LOB columns (badly).
• The Advanced MDX Tips and Tricks session by Chris Webb. Chris is an utmost authority on MDX, so I couldn’t miss this one. He also stated that this would be his very last MDX session ever (session, not training!). Unless he comes back like an aged rockstar, that is. It was a very interesting session and I learned a lot. Chris did a great piece on subselects (damn you SSRS and Excel), partitioning and the unknown UNORDER() function. Too bad there wasn’t more time.
• Deep Dive into Data Modeling using Power BI Desktop and SQL Server Analysis by Kasper De Jonge. Kasper has worked both on the SSAS team and on the Power BI team, so I was very excited to attend his session. He did a very thorough explanation of row level security (RLS) and bi-directional cross filtering (BI-DI). He had some warnings about over-filtering your model using BI-DI, so you shouldn’t blindly enable it on every relationship, especially in more complex models. He finished off with a part on DAX variables, which are a great addition to the language.
• The Power BI happy hour. Chris did a great demo about using Power BI and your brainwaves to do predictions and you could tell he really put some work in it. Joey D’Antoni talked about beer and cycling, Nico Jacobs about Power BI running for president and Wesley Backelant ended the day with a nice Power BI dashboard about his music influences. Great stuff.

I had a great time and can’t wait till next years’ edition.