Pro DAX with Power BI

Book excerpt: Learn the intricate workings of DAX and the mechanics that are necessary to solve advanced Power BI challenges. This book is all about DAX (Data Analysis Expressions), the formula language used in Power BI—Microsoft’s leading self-service business intelligence application—and covers other products such as PowerPivot and SQL Server Analysis Services Tabular. You will learn how to leverage the advanced applications of DAX to solve complex tasks. Often a task seems complex due to a lack of understanding, or a misunderstanding of core principles, and how certain components interact with each other. The authors of this book use solutions and examples to teach you how to solve complex problems. They explain the intricate workings of important concepts such as Filter Context and Context Transition. You will learn how Power BI, through combining DAX building blocks (such as measures, table filtering, and data lineage), can yield extraordinary analytical power. Throughout Pro Dax with Power BI these building blocks are used to create and compose solutions for advanced DAX problems, so you can independently build solutions to your own complex problems, and gain valuable insight from your data. What You Will Learn Understand the intricate workings of DAX to solve advanced problems Deconstruct problems into manageable parts in order to create your own recipes Apply predefined solutions for addressing problems, and link back step-by-step to the mechanics of DAX, to know the foundation of this powerful query language Get fully on board with DAX, a new and evolving language, by learning best practices Who This Book Is For Anyone who wants to use Power BI to build advanced and complex models. Some experience writing DAX is helpful, but not essential if you have experience with other data query languages such as MDX or SQL.