Book Image

Hands-On Business Intelligence with DAX

By : Ian Horne
Book Image

Hands-On Business Intelligence with DAX

By: Ian Horne

Overview of this book

Data Analysis Expressions (DAX) is known for its ability to increase efficiency by extracting new information from data that is already present in your model. With this book, you’ll learn to use DAX’s functionality and flexibility in the BI and data analytics domains. You’ll start by learning the basics of DAX, along with understanding the importance of good data models, and how to write efficient DAX formulas by using variables and formatting styles. You’ll then explore how DAX queries work with the help of examples. The book will guide you through optimizing the BI workflow by writing powerful DAX queries. Next, you’ll learn to manipulate and load data of varying complexity within Microsoft products such as Power BI, SQL Server, and Excel Power Pivot. You’ll then discover how to build and extend your data models to gain additional insights, before covering progressive DAX syntax and functions to understand complex relationships in DAX. Later, you’ll focus on important DAX functions, specifically those related to tables, date and time, filtering, and statistics. Finally, you’ll delve into advanced topics such as how the formula and storage engines work to optimize queries. By the end of this book, you’ll have gained hands-on experience in employing DAX to enhance your data models by extracting new information and gaining deeper insights.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
1
Section 1: Introduction to DAX for the BI Pro
7
Section 2: Understanding DAX Functions and Syntax
14
Section 3: Taking DAX to the Next Level

Summary

In this chapter, we covered a brief introduction to the DAX language, looking at what it is and why learning it is important if you want to get the most out of Excel Power Pivot, SSAS Tabular, or Power BI. You should now have an understanding of the different data types and operators available in DAX and how these operators implicitly convert data to the required type. You have learned about calculated columns and measures, including the differences between them and how and when you can make use of them.

You have also learned how to make use of these features in DAX to expand your data model, creating new information from existing data and giving you even greater insights into your data. Finally, you have learned about the evaluation context, with the row context and the filter context, and how you can modify an existing filter context using the CALCULATE function.

In the next chapter, we will move on to look at using variables in DAX formulas and how these can make your DAX code easier to read, as well as potentially more efficient.