If you work with Excel Pivot Tables, Power BI, or Analysis Services Tabular more than likely you are working to improve your DAX skills. I know I am. While I do a lot of work with DAX, I am always looking to get better at writing it and better at explaining how to write it for clients or class attendees. As I find things which I think others may find helpful, I write about them here to help spread the knowledge, especially to those people who have background in SQL.
DAX History
Microsoft has been working on the DAX language for about 10 years and released it in as part of Excel 2010 Power Pivot Add-in, back when Microsoft was incorporating Power BI functionality in Excel. Microsoft wrote DAX so that it would be like Excel so that people who are familiar with Excel would have an easier time writing it. While DAX is easier than MDX, it is enough different from Excel that it can get quite complex. One of the founders of the DAX language is Jeffery Wang, who is still actively working on enhancing the language further. He works not only with developers but also people in the technical community who work extensively with DAX to get their input. I also found out recently that he took time out to do a technical review of a book on the DAX language by Phil Seamark b | t.
Leveraging SQL Knowledge to Learn DAX
If like me, your skills like not in Excel but in SQL, reading a book which builds upon SQL knowledge to understand DAX is really helpful. Beginning DAX with Power BI provides examples of how to write something in SQL then shows how the same functionality would be written in DAX, sort of like a SQL-to-DAX language library. Showing how to get the answer from SQL and DAX is a great technique to provide a better understanding of how to write DAX. I worked a client recently who validated all of the DAX in the tabular model by writing SQL to ensure they were getting the correct answers. I think the validation process would have been improved with this book which takes DAX out of the black magic category and explains the way it works.
Performance Tuning DAX
Once you start writing a lot of DAX, you will at some point write a query which performs badly. What do you do to avoid poorly performing DAX? Phil provides some “old-school debugging” techniques to understand what is being generated and where it is going wrong. He also shows how you can use DAX Studio and SSMS to help figure out how and why your DAX is working the way it is. You will definitely want to reference Chapter 8 to learn more about this important topic.
Other Methods for Learning DAX and Improving Power BI skills
If you are looking for a hands-on environment to better understand how DAX works and how to improve your Power BI skills I have two opportunities for you in the US. I will be giving Advanced Power BI Classes in Columbus, Ohio on July 27 and Boston, Massachusetts on September 20. Of course we will be covering more advanced DAX development and tuning as well as applied visualization theory to improve the interactivity of your Power BI reports as well as hands on labs to implement the new drill-through features and enhancements in Power BI and other class topics. I hope to meet you there or at some of the other conferences I will be attending this year. Check out my Engagement page and hopefully find a place where we can meet up as I would love to meet you.
Yours Always,
Ginger Grant
Data aficionado et SQL Raconteur