Dax

Extreme DAX

Discover the true power of DAX and build advanced DAX solutions for practical business scenarios Key FeaturesSolve complex business problems within Microsoft BI tools including Power BI, SQL Server, and ExcelDevelop a conceptual understanding of critical business data modeling principlesLearn the subtleties of Power BI data visualizations, evaluation context, context transition, and filteringBook Description This book helps business analysts generate powerful and sophisticated analyses from their data using DAX and get the most out of Microsoft Business Intelligence tools. Extreme DAX will first teach you the principles of business intelligence, good model design, and how DAX fits into it all. Then, you'll launch into detailed examples of DAX in real-world business scenarios such as inventory calculations, forecasting, intercompany business, and data security. At each step, senior DAX experts will walk you through the subtleties involved in working with Power BI models and common mistakes to look out for as you build advanced data aggregations. You'll deepen your understanding of DAX functions, filters, and measures, and how and when they can be used to derive effective insights. You'll also be provided with PBIX files for each chapter, so that you can follow along and explore in your own time. What you will learnUnderstand data modeling concepts and structures before you start working with DAXGrasp how relationships in Power BI models are different from those in RDBMSesSecure aggregation levels, attributes, and hierarchies using PATH functions and row-level securityGet to grips with the crucial concept of contextApply advanced context and filtering functions including TREATAS, GENERATE, and SUMMARIZEExplore dynamically changing visualizations with helper tables and dynamic labels and axesWork with week-based calendars and understand standard time-intelligenceEvaluate investments intelligently with the XNPV and XIRR financial DAX functionsWho this book is for Extreme DAX is written for analysts with a working knowledge of DAX in Power BI or other Microsoft analytics tools. It will help you upgrade your knowledge and work with analytical models more effectively, so you'll need practical experience with DAX before you can get started.

The Definitive Guide to DAX

Power BI DAX Simplified

DAX is the language of data analysis in Microsoft Power BI, Azure Analysis Services, and Excel Power Pivot. DAX is a powerful language that can quickly empower you to analyze year-over-year or rolling 12 months calculations. It is rare to find an analytics solution using Microsoft technologies (especially Power BI) that doesn’t require some calculations to be written by DAX. As a Power BI (or Microsoft BI) developer, it is essential to learn this language and master it. Learning a language is not just learning the structure and functions. It is learning how, where, and when to use it so that you can solve real-world problems with it. In my training and consulting experience on Power BI, I realized that DAX is the weak point for many Power BI users. DAX itself is not a complex language. It is merely a language of expression. The complexity of learning DAX is not the formula or the functions. It is how to use it in real-world scenarios and how it performs on a dataset or visual. I have been writing many blogs about DAX for many years. My blog articles are all coming from my experience working with Power BI. I found it helpful to compile them all in a book. Because my blog articles practically explain things, I thought it better to title it as a practical way of learning DAX by examples. Indeed, there are books, articles, and Microsoft documentation on how each function works where and how. However, learning these through an example would bring a new way of understanding it. A good analytics solution is a combined outcome of a good data model, good data preparation, and good analytics and calculations. I have written another book about the Basics of modeling in Power BI. This book is covering the calculation and DAX aspects of it. This book is for you if you are building a Power BI solution. Even if you are just visualizing the data, calculations are an essential part of analytics. You do need to have the calculation ready before visualizing it. This is not a book to explain every single function in DAX. The approach in this book is to have practical examples. Every chapter is based on real-world examples of using a combination of functions to solve a challenge. You can start from any chapter and finish at any chapter. The order of chapters suggested in this book is just a guideline to help you have a smooth flow of topics. Each chapter can be read without needing other chapters. Examples of this book are designed in a way that you can use the learning straight away in your Power BI file.