Data is becoming increasingly important. Customers want more and more precise data about the continuation of the shipment, and carriers want more and more precise data about the actual costs and optimization options in the process.
Microsoft and other suppliers have filled this gap with business intelligence tools such as Power BI. With Power BI it is possible for companies to collect all kinds of data and create new data. For example, Transpas does not record how many shipments were late, but by comparing the time from the on-board computer with the time on the shipment, this data can be parsed from the existing data.
However, using Power BI is not without risks. This article explains how Power BI can be used in combination with Transpas, and how not.
For reasons of formatting, this article assumes that Microsoft's Power BI is used.
However, the text below also applies to business intelligence software from other suppliers.
Apart from this article, Art Systems does not provide advice or support on using or setting up Power BI. Art Systems also cannot help with setting up a data warehouse, secondary server or other business intelligence or analytics solutions. Contact the system administrator or a specialized company for this.
For (performance) problems caused by business intelligence tools, we invoice for the hours we spend diagnosing the problem. We offer no support in solving the problems caused.
Transpas is a great source of data, but it is important to note that Transpas is a user application, not an archive. The use of Power BI has a major impact on the load on the SQL Server on which Transpas runs. The intensive use of Power BI will therefore cause problems for users. This can, among other things, cause slowness or cause Transpas to completely freeze (deadlocks).
It is absolutely not recommended to use Power BI on the Transpas production server.
Never place any copy for Power BI on the same server as Transpas. This will still have an impact on Transpas' performance.
Above we explain why it is a bad idea to use Power BI on the production environment.
How should it be done? There are a number of possibilities.
The most common option is a data warehouse. This involves making a complete copy of the database every night and storing it in an OLAP cube on a different server. Reporting is then run on this data warehouse. Because the data is on a different server, the production database is not burdened. This ensures that more accurate (heavy) reporting can be run and users do not experience any delays.
One of the disadvantages of a data warehouse is that the data is up to 24 hours old.
If more recent data is necessary for reporting, a secondary server can be used. This is a second server that is separate from the Transpas server. This second server is kept up to date using log shipping. All operations performed on Transpas' SQL Server are recorded in a log file. This log file is then transferred at a fixed interval, for example 15 or 30 minutes, to the secondary server where it performs the same changes. For example, there is a copy of Transpas, which is at most as old as the set interval. This is recent enough for almost all reporting.
Check with your system administrator to see if additional licensing is required for this secondary server.
If it is not an option to set up a separate server, the last option could be to consider retrieving data from the production environment. As mentioned earlier, this is strongly discouraged. Instead, consider having a custom report drawn up that can be called up in Transpas.
For (performance) problems caused by business intelligence tools, we invoice for the hours we spend diagnosing the problem. We do not provide support in solving the problems caused.
If you do decide to run Power BI on the Transpas production server, keep a number of things in mind:
read uncommitted.Once a choice has been made about the design of Power BI, data must be collected.
A number of functions have been created within Transpas that can be used to read data.
A list of the available functions can be found on the page below:
Apart from these functions, Art Systems unfortunately provides no support for creating, maintaining or troubleshooting Power BI Dashboards.