In this chapter, you will begin your journey to mastering the use of DAX with a brief introduction to the DAX language itself. We'll look at what it is and why, as a Business Intelligence (BI) professional, you need to learn it if you want to unleash the full power of Excel Power Pivot, Analysis Services, or Power BI.
By the end of this chapter, you will be introduced to the different groups of functions and operators available and the differences between calculated columns and measures, and you will have started your understanding of evaluation contexts. This chapter will round off with a look at how you can alter how filters affect measures by using one of the most important DAX functions, the CALCULATE function.
This chapter is broken down into the following sections:
- Introducing DAX
- Working with data types and operators
- Working with calculated columns and measures
- Evaluation contexts – part 1
- Using the CALCULATE function