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    863 Ideas

    rory.smith
    TimeXtender Xpert
    rory.smithTimeXtender Xpert

    Be able to use Tables and Named Ragens defined in Excel filesSUBMITTED

    If you are lucky, Excel files to be loaded into a data platform contain named ranges or defined tables that allow you to only load data required. I.e. a certain range of cells could be given a name or defined as a table, avoiding all sorts of setting complexity to parse the Excel data.In the TimeXtender Excel connection you can currently restrict data loading to ‘defined tables only’, but this refers to table definitions you need to input yourself. If you are loading statistics (like the recently disappeared US Census data), those typically have table definitions which avoid all the textual context meant for human consumption. The current process is to open the Excel (requiring an M365/Office install or license), find the definition of the named range or table, copy-paste that as a table definition in the portal and load that.I would like to have an option where the TimeXtender connector recognizes the named ranges and tables contained within the Excel and presents those. I.e. ‘Only use defined tables from the Excel file’, ‘Only use defined tables from the Data Source settings’ as toggle options. This way I never need to open the Excel imanually f it is properly defined and future changes to the ranges won't require manual intervention like they would now.

    1
    rvgfox
    Problem Solver
    Forum|Forum|1 year ago
    Roy V
    Problem Solver
    Roy VProblem Solver

    pause job schedulesSUBMITTED

    Hello,The option to enable/disable job schedules would be great.For example when maintenance on the vm’s is planned.Another situation would be when we are planning an upgrade and I want to make sure no jobs are running (instead of killing the running jobs as multiple jobs are running during the day). If you can disable the schedules in the evening you do not have to delete them, write down somewhere what the schedule was and recreate them when the upgrade is finished.I hope it can be made available.Greetings, Roy

    4
    Roy V
    Problem Solver
    Forum|Forum|1 year ago
    oscarcleve
    Contributor
    oscarcleveContributor

    Unmark excluded table in Execution PreviewSUBMITTED

    Currently, it appears in the preview when executing an execution package that an excluded table would actually be executed. Only after the execution you can see that the excluded tables were skipped. I suggest excluded tables are unmarked in the preview to avoid confusion.  

    0
    oscarcleve
    Contributor
    Forum|Forum|1 year ago
    Starter
    bradmorganStarter

    Providing read-only access to TimeXtender classic projectsSUBMITTED

    With the older 20.10.44.64 desktop version with repo and warehouse databases on Azure SQL Databases. I'd like to provide access to a user to view the TimeXtender projects, but limit them to not be able to edit them. Is there a good way to do that?Can I just use a read-only credential for the warehouse database and the read-only ODX credentials?Can I install the TimeXtender application on multiple workstations using the same license key but not enabling the scheduler service and not installing the odx service on the workstations?

    3
    Forum|Forum|1 year ago
    Contributor
    nmoContributor

    Allow search for exception in portalSUBMITTED

    When working in the Exmon exception portal it would be nice if you could search for a specific exception/test rather than having to navigate the datatype hierarchy and having to remember the location of each test. 

    0
    Contributor
    Forum|Forum|1 year ago
    rory.smith
    TimeXtender Xpert
    rory.smithTimeXtender Xpert

    Make Top operator without sort in conditional lookup warn userSUBMITTED

    If I create a Conditional Lookup field, it will by default use the Max operator to enforce only one result from the lookup. If I change the operator to Top without a Sort specified (give me the first record whatever it is, formally non-deterministic) , I get the same code as I would with the None operator.While it seems the result of the None operator code enforces 1 result for the lookup (which is mandated by the SET statement, see: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/t-sql/queries/update-transact-sql?view=sql-server-ver16#best-practices). I wonder if you could prove that the undetermined result from the INNER JOIN is the same record as would have been returned by a TOP(1). I suspect that it may not always be the same record.If I specify a Sort, I see that the code implements a Top 1 explicitly. What I would like is that a Top operator without a sort gives a warning on apply / Deploy that offers the user a choice:None operator (because this code will mostly be faster, but not always) explicit Top without Sort. This option will almost always be slower and may or may not return the same result as an INNER JOIN would, but will be explicitly what the user asked for. The option to specify a Sort: this may actually be what the user needed.This choice could be influenced by the operators on other lookups in the table, as bundling them together is faster than running them serially.See some code examples below. I have a list of breweries, which guarantees mutliple breweries for some US states. And I have a list of states with population per age. I am looking up an age from the state table to the brewery table based on the state name being equal. There are at least 87 records for each state ( age 0 - 85 plus 999 for people over 85 years of age). Max operator: Top without sort / None operator: Top with sort: 

    0
    rory.smith
    TimeXtender Xpert
    Forum|Forum|1 year ago
    rory.smith
    TimeXtender Xpert
    rory.smithTimeXtender Xpert

    Add Table Insert, Custom Table Insert, Add Related Records to mappingsSUBMITTED

    There are a number of ways data can be moved to tables, a number of these are shown as mappings. A number are not: Table Insert, Custom Table Insert, Add Related Records do not show in mappings and cannot be easily overseen.As these functionalities all have mappings internally, they should also show up in the mappings folder. An example of where this is useful is if you have a Fact table that consists of many subfacts that are mapped from an underlying area. You may want to split off the subfacts as separate tables and then do a table insert inside the same layer. During this operation you would want to use features like Show Uneven Mappings to check that your mappings are correct. However, you do not see the Table Insert and therefore need to take screenshots.I propose that Table Insert, Custom Table Insert (parameterised), and Add Related Records integrate with mappings. This would also mean being able to use Smart Synchronize and View Uneven Mappings and seeing the Table Insert etc. under the field.

    0
    rory.smith
    TimeXtender Xpert
    Forum|Forum|1 year ago
    rvgfox
    Problem Solver
    rvgfoxProblem Solver

    Show execution history filteredSUBMITTED

    When we use the icon inside a package to see the “Execution History” it would be more usefull to see the history filtered.  

    0
    rvgfox
    Problem Solver
    Forum|Forum|1 year ago
    rvgfox
    Problem Solver
    rvgfoxProblem Solver

    Show the source version in the notes of a migration instanceSUBMITTED

    It would be very usefull to know the origin version number in a instance migrated from DEV to PROD.

    0
    rvgfox
    Problem Solver
    Forum|Forum|1 year ago
    oscarcleve
    Contributor
    oscarcleveContributor

    Show Environment name in Data Area tabSUBMITTED

    Hi,To clarify which environment the open data areas belong to, I suggest that the environment name is shown together with the data area name in each tab. The image shows where the environment name would be added. This would decrease the risk of changes being made in the wrong environment.  

    0
    oscarcleve
    Contributor
    Forum|Forum|1 year ago
    Contributor
    KajEmergoContributor

    Portal user access refinementSUBMITTED

    In the TimeXtender portal, you can currently assign users access to Ingest, Prepare and Deliver instances (without giving them a ‘role’ in the portal). For Ingest instances, this means that a user can use all data sources attached to this instance. However, this does not allow them to adjust those data sources (e.g. add an endpoint to a REST data source). In my opinion, three features should be added to extend the way we give users access in the portal:Access on data source level, as mentioned above. Would be nice to see this being automatically inherited if we give a user access to an Ingest instance. In order to make this all easier, we want to work with user groups instead of having to open up each instance/data source:  Lastly, I believe it is important that people with access to an Ingest instance should be able to create new data sources and attach them to the instances they have access to. This is only possible through the ‘Data Estate Admin’ role at the moment:  

    1
    Thomas Lind
    Forum|Forum|1 year ago
    Pontus Olausson
    Contributor
    Pontus OlaussonContributor

    Service Principal authentication for Dynamic Values querySUBMITTED

    When configuring an instance, we are able to use Microsoft Entra Service Principal to authenticate to the underlying Azure SQL Server.However, when using dynamic values in a data source, Microsoft Entra Service Principal authentication does not seem to be supported.This is a problem for us, because we have a SQL Server that we want to limit authentication to Entra ID only.Adding Microsoft Entra Service Principal authentication to dynamic values would be benificial.

    0
    Pontus Olausson
    Contributor
    Forum|Forum|1 year ago
    bas.hopstaken
    TimeXtender Xpert
    bas.hopstakenTimeXtender Xpert

    Feature equality between TimeXtender Classic (V20.10) and TimeXtender Data Integration (V6XXX)SUBMITTED

    During the TimeXtender partner event Xtend24, it was announced that version V20.10 will no longer be a Long-Term Support version. It will be rebranded as TimeXtender Classic and used for SQL-only infrastructure setups. They also announced that new features will be developed for TimeXtender Classic.There are some features in TimeXtender Data Integration that would add significant value to TimeXtender Classic as well. Please consider making the following features available for TimeXtender Classic if possible:DAX Snippets DAX Calculation Groups Xpilot Integration Deploy to Power BI Premium/XMLA endpoint Data Profiling PowerShell package support The newly developed TimeXtender connectors for: Exact Online, Business Central, Salesforce (and any new connector that will be available in the future) Context-sensitive help (links to articles on the support site)

    4
    bas.hopstaken
    TimeXtender Xpert
    Forum|Forum|1 year ago
    Contributor
    Xiaoqing HuContributor

    Issue with the data source short name, cannot change it afterwordsSUBMITTED

    Dear, when creating a new data source connection, my colleague cloned it from an existing instance and the adjusted the ingest instance mapping. Whereas mistakenly there is an unwanted character in the short name as below.After hitting the clone button it appears not possible to change the short name anymore. Thus the name in the storage account container is also incorrect. Could you advice how we can change this short name?The setups (such of pk and incremental settings) of the data source are completed, and the DW_SourceCode is also used as a calculated column and loaded to the following layers so it is not impossible to create the data source from scratch but would cost a lot time.. That is why we want to see if it’s still possible to be edited.Thank you in advance  

    2
    Christian Hauggaard
    Forum|Forum|1 year ago
    rvgfox
    Problem Solver
    rvgfoxProblem Solver

    Performance tuning tipsSUBMITTED

    Perphaps it is a good suggestion:  

    1
    rory.smith
    TimeXtender Xpert
    Forum|Forum|1 year ago
    erik.van.mastrigt
    TimeXtender Xpert
    erik.van.mastrigtTimeXtender Xpert

    Manually refresh RLS security tables for tabular endpointsSUBMITTED

    When setting up row-level security (RLS) for tabular semantic layers, so-called security tables are created in the data warehouse. For instance, we’re having a semantic model called ‘UFO201az [...]’ and row-level security enabled on field [PersoneelsgebiedKey].In the MDW this table is created:: RLS is dynamic, so all members and values are read from a table, which has its origin in a source system and is being refreshed on a daily base.While all tables in the data warehouse are daily refreshed, these security tables only refresh when the semantic layer itself is executed from within TImeXtender. For reasons we use external triggers which directly refresh the tabular models (XMLA endpoints actually, but with TX 20.10.39, hence this ‘odd’ workaround :) ). This way of refreshing the endpoints does NOT include the security tables used for RLS, which means that new authorizations won’t appear in the model.Is there a trick/hack/exploit/statement/stored procedure/etc to refresh these security tables outside from TimeXtender? It would save us some pointless executions of full models, just to keep the RLS in sync.

    4
    rvgfox
    Problem Solver
    Forum|Forum|1 year ago
    Contributor
    nmoContributor

    Allow custom formating options in TimeXtender Orchestration & Data QualitySUBMITTED

    When setting up column formating in a query in TimeXtender Orchestration & Data Quality the date formats are quite restrictive.It would be nice if it was possible to define a custom format for this datatype 

    0
    Contributor
    Forum|Forum|1 year ago
    rory.smith
    TimeXtender Xpert
    rory.smithTimeXtender Xpert

    Be able to define a default value for a field without using a transformationSUBMITTED

    It is currently possible to define a default value for a column as a transformation. Due to the (rather strange) choice of using an actual transformation for this, it is impossible to apply this to Simple Mode tables.It is quite common to want a backup value for a field in case a mapping does not fill it. In staging tables you will commonly need to add a transformation with an IsEmpty condition, in MDW tables you need to turn off Simple Mode and add a transformation with a default column value. The latter adds a raw table with associated I/O.A better solution would be to use a named default constraint (see: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/relational-databases/tables/specify-default-values-for-columns?view=sql-server-ver16) that uses DDL to ensure a field gets a default value if it is not specified in an insert. Obviously this means dropping the constraint to change data types, but that is minimal overhead compared to the advantage of not needing explicit transformations.Default column constraints can also be applied in bulk operations (see: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/relational-databases/import-export/keep-nulls-or-use-default-values-during-bulk-import-sql-server?view=sql-server-ver16) meaning that they can also apply to Custom Data. This is an improvement to the current status quo there:  Default column values make the model more explicit and allow a user to see this information from the database structure instead of needing to dive into code. A default value should be a property of a field, not a transformation. The fact that SQL Server deviates from the ANSI standard does not block the implementation here. Additionally, this allows more use of Simple Mode which should speed up performance. 

    0
    rory.smith
    TimeXtender Xpert
    Forum|Forum|1 year ago
    Contributor
    nmoContributor

    Create field parametersSUBMITTED

    Field parameters are a powerful tool in Power BI reporting.It would be great if we could create and maintain these through the TimeXtender client and publish to our Power BI endpoints.There are examples on how this is achieved through Tabular Editor as seen here:https://p3adaptive.com/completing-the-set-up-field-parameters-using-tabular-editor/https://docs.tabulareditor.com/common/CSharpScripts/Beginner/script-create-field-parameter.html

    0
    Contributor
    Forum|Forum|1 year ago
    Roy V
    Problem Solver
    Roy VProblem Solver

    Enable Custom Data for tables to Snowflake instanceSUBMITTED

    At the moment custom data to snowflake is not supported.We use this to easily add the dimension record -1But you also can not use pre- and post steps to insert data via a stored procedure.So hopefully it can be made possible to use custom data in combination with Snowflake. 

    0
    Roy V
    Problem Solver
    Forum|Forum|1 year ago
    Roy V
    Problem Solver
    Roy VProblem Solver

    Enable the functionality of pre and post step scripts to SnowflakeSUBMITTED

    At this point it is not possible to add/use pre and post steps on tables when the prepare instance is a Snowflake one. As we have quite some stored procedures executed in scripts in pre and post steps this is a significate one for us in the deployment to snowflake.

    0
    Roy V
    Problem Solver
    Forum|Forum|1 year ago
    andri
    Contributor
    andriContributor

    Increase the 15 character limit on names of data sources and database objectsSUBMITTED

    The limit of 15 characters for the name on data sources and database objects needs to be increased.

    4
    bas.hopstaken
    TimeXtender Xpert
    Forum|Forum|1 year ago
    Paul McLeod Bespoke Analytics
    TimeXtender Xpert
    Paul McLeod Bespoke AnalyticsTimeXtender Xpert

    SQL Export in TimeXtender Deliver InstanceSUBMITTED

    Can we get a SQL Export option in the new TimeXtender Deliver Instances. If we could Select “SQL Server” in the portal like we can select “CSV”. Used this extensively in V20 and have clients in the new SAAS application that are requesting this capability.As it is no longer a feature I currently have to construct this export outside of TimeXtender which creates problems in synchronizing TX load processes and the subsequent export.Or I can create a dummy “Transform” instance that I point to the destination database and use it just to export the tables. But this comes with extra licensing costs just to be able to export to SQL.

    2
    bas.hopstaken
    TimeXtender Xpert
    Forum|Forum|1 year ago
    Contributor
    dsvartzmanContributor

    ODX task schedule to local timeIMPLEMENTED

    Hi,  At the moment scheduling ODX  task is done using UTC time but Package execution schedule to run on local timeAs there is clearly dependency between the two, it makes it extra difficult to synchronize the task execution and the package execution. My suggestion is have the ODX task schedule also run on server's local time. Or alternatively enforce UTC time on package execution. Ideally would be to integrate the ODX and Package executions into a single scheduler container.

    9
    JTreadwell
    Forum|Forum|1 year ago
    Contributor
    BennyContributor

    Expand Ingest Instance incremental loading optionsSUBMITTED

    Currently, incrementally loading a data source with a “substract from value”-value set in the Ingest Instance is only supported for fields that are of type INT or DATETIME (see this). I would like to suggest that this list is expanded. My source database has standard update time fields which all contain numeric values. Their datatypes now need to be overridden first. 

    1
    rory.smith
    TimeXtender Xpert
    Forum|Forum|1 year ago

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