Happy Birthday Hui…
Note: Hui’s birthday is yesterday (13th). I planned to write this post and share the dashboard workbook with you all yesterday itself, but my daughter wasn’t keeping well and we were busy taking care of her. (And yes, she is ok now, thanks for asking. 🙂 )
Some of you know our guest author and Excel ninja Hui. Yesterday was his birthday. And I wanted to create nice birthday gift for him. So I took a database dump of our forums data and created a dashboard.
First take a look the dashboard I made for him:
[click here for a large version]
Some Key Findings
- Our forums have a total of 5,227 posts, out of which Hui contributed 24% (roughly 1 in 4)
- On average Hui takes 13 and half hours to get back to the questioner with an answer. The fastest he has been was 31 seconds. (only last year data)
- Hui has been very busy on November 30th – 2010, answering 19 times on that day.
- The person who got benefited most from Hui is indi visual, with 44 replies from Hui.
- People used the words thank and Hui in same post 395 times.
- Hui wakes up early and answers questions on our forums. Then, before sleep, he spends some time helping people.
- If Hui had $2.5 per each letter he typed in our forums, he would be a millionaire.
- All data as of Jan 11, 2011. Between that and now, Hui has already answered 37 more times (and still helping…)
How is this dashboard constructed?
With lots of love of course. But quite a few excel techniques were used too.
- Structurally, this dashboard is similar to my 10,000 comment dashboard.
- Word cloud of Hui’s replies is from wordle.net
- Scrollable chart at the bottom is a grid of 20×42 cells conditionally formatted. Scrolling effect thru OFFSET formula.
- Pivot tables, a whole lot of them were used to find the summaries I want
- The header content is picture links & shapes.
- Rest of them are left to your imagination.
Download Excel Workbook with this Dashboard
Please click here to download the workbook. It is locked.
I have made a 45 minute video explaining how this dashboard is constructed. I will be giving this video & unlocked workbook as a bonus to people joining Excel School dashboard option or purchasing Dashboard training kit.
Interested in Dashboards?
- I recommend joining Excel School. You can learn how to make awesome charts & dashboards.
- Visit our Dashboards Page. It has tons of useful information, examples, tutorials & templates.
Say Happy Birthday & Thanks to Hui
I am sure directly or indirectly, Hui has helped many of you. So take a minute and say thanks to him. Wish him several more years of awesomeness, happiness, wealth & health. 🙂
One Response to “SQL vs. Power Query – The Ultimate Comparison”
Enjoyed your SQL / Power Query podcast (A LOT). I've used SQL a little longer than Chandoo. Power Query not so much.
Today I still use SQL & VBA for my "go to" applications. While I don't pull billions of rows, I do pull millions. I agree with Chandoo about Power Query (PQ) lack of performance. I've tried to benchmark PQ to SQL and I find that a well written SQL will work much faster. Like mentioned in the podcast, my similar conclusion is that SQL is doing the filtering on the server while PQ is pulling data into the local computer and then filtering the data. I've heard about PQ query folding but I still prefer SQL.
My typical excel application will use SQL to pull data from an Enterprise DB. I load data into Structured Tables and/or Excel Power Pivot (especially if there's lot of data).
I like to have a Control Worksheet to enter parameters, display error messages and have user buttons to execute VBA. I use VBA to build/edit parameters used in the SQL. Sometimes I use parameter-based SQL. Sometimes I create a custom SQL String in a hidden worksheet that I then pull into VBA code (these may build a string of comma separated values that's used with a SQL include). Another SQL trick I like to do is tag my data with a YY-MM, YY-QTR, or YY-Week field constructed form a Transaction Date.
In an application, I like to create a dashboard(s) that may contain hyperlinks that allow the end-user to drill into data. Sometimes the hyperlink will point to worksheet and sometimes to a supporting workbook. In some cases, I use a double click VBA Macro that will pull additional data and direct the user to a supplemental worksheet or pivot table.
In recent years I like Dynamic Formulas & Lambda Functions. I find this preferable to pivot tales and slicers. I like to use a Lambda in conjunction with a cube formula to pull data from a power pivot data model. I.E. a Lambda using a cube formula to aggregate Accounting Data by a general ledger account and financial period. Rather than present info in a power pivot table, you can use this combination to easily build financial reports in a format that's familiar to Accounting Professionals.
One thing that PQ does very well is consolidating data from separate files. In the old days this was always a pain.
I've found that using SQL can be very trying (even for someone with experience). It's largely an iterative process. Start simple then use Xlookup (old days Match/Index). Once you get the relationships correct you can then use SQL joins to construct a well behaved SQL statement.
Most professional enterprise systems offer a schema that's very valuable for constructing SQL statements. For any given enterprise system there's often a community of users that will share SQL. I.E. MS Great Plains was a great source (but I haven't used them in years).
Hope this long reply has value - keep up the good work.