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

Summary

In this chapter, we have discussed the foundational concepts of the Power BI model. You have learned what makes a Power BI model fundamentally different from other data management products (the in-memory column store) and what the consequences are for what an optimal design looks like.

A good Power BI model has an effective structure with fact tables, filter tables, and relationships between them. Making good design choices when it comes to structure and data types, as well as carefully considering what your data looks like from the perspective of granularity, unique values, and value distribution, leads to a model that performs well. And perhaps more importantly, such a model forms a good basis for rich calculations in DAX.

In the next chapter, we will look at the ways DAX can be used in Power BI models.