Book Image

Extreme DAX

By : Michiel Rozema, Henk Vlootman
Book Image

Extreme DAX

By: Michiel Rozema, Henk Vlootman

Overview of this book

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.
Table of Contents (17 chapters)
Free Chapter
1
Part I: Introduction
6
Part II: Business cases
15
Other Books You May Enjoy
16
Index

Exploring the Future: Forecasting and Future Values

Forecasting is a commonly used method to estimate the future value of investments. Power BI is a great tool for visualizing forecasts in an effective way based on DAX calculations. Financial functions in DAX allow for analyzing multiple scenarios to investigate the result of investments.

The business case in this chapter focuses on insights into the value of an investment over time. As a specific example, think of acquiring a property to rent out: after an initial investment, incoming and outgoing cash flows are to be expected in the future. The value of a single dollar in the future is different from a dollar in the present; this is due to inflation, but is also related to the option to invest the dollar from the present to earn a return over time. Future cash flows therefore need to be adjusted to make them comparable to today's investment and ultimately to answer the question: is this a good investment to make?

As...