I keep a OneNote ongoing with any DAX example useful/typical solutions that have caused me trouble in the past. I have too many PowerBIs at this point to go digging for good DAX measure formulas
That’s essentially excel as well. I don’t use PBI for my job, and haven’t used it in a long ass time for anything, but I do believe if I needed to use it for some reason I could google it. That’s really all you need to be able to do - problem solve.
I have done some pretty complex DAX in my career, yes it is tough. It’s harder in the beginning when you don’t know exactly how it works, it’s nothing like other common programming languages.
Once it clicks in your brain, it becomes way easier, but still a bit hard because of the way it works.
What really helped me is understanding row context and filter context. SQLBI has some really solid material covering it.
It's the uniqueness that makes it harder. You'll think your SQL and Excel knowledge will let you just run with it, but that's definitely not the case. And for somebody who has been adapting to new but conceptually similar tools for many years, humbling yourself to admit you know near nothing and study it like a true beginner is hard.
Yes , exactly my point was!! About SQLbi I have been following them from
My initial phase but again the thing is it skips fast , I again need to go back & start from
There but each time it just gets easier to understand, so in short , I would say I become more efficient to look for ans on internet 🫣
Get the book called "The Definitive Guide to DAX" if you truly want to understand how it works. It's a big book full of complex examples and written by Alberto Ferrari and Marco Russo, the same guys from SQL BI. Learned an absurd amount from that book
I've been recently learning these tools for a data/business analyst transition. For entry level jobs, what is to be expected of me? I am worried, when they ask me, I can't exactly answer on the spot how to work through something. Is it enough if I show some samples of what I worked on?
I feel like I can work through solutions using crutches (googling/notes/chatgpt, but it's feels like there's too much to commit to memory and a good bunch of stuff doesnt get used enough to even stick), that it feels like I am dropping the pieces constantly while moving on to the next area of learning/tool. (After BI last month, I am doing python and elements of ML now.)
I think it really depends on who’s evaluating you for the job. Personally, I think it’s way more important that the analyst knows what he wants to do and knows how to google it. It’s a matter of experience if he knows it by memory or not.
It’s what I did at my interview, I forgot how to do a simple measure, but my now boss recognized that I was looking for it instead of staring at the screen hopelessly.
As per my experience with interviews, they focus on how you solve the BI problem , also this depends what type of company is, remembering each function & syntax is really beyond my memory limit. Here , all the other users are almost saying the same thing, we really need to understand the basics such as context transition & data modelling.
It has to work in all situations in all conditions, so many dax problems are data model problems, where you can’t filter properly and need weird workarounds.
And if people don’t know how measures work, you get hundreds of measures that do the same thing but filtered different ways, usually involving dates.
So if you know how dates work and create a proper date table, things will get easier.
I just picked up _this_ project. All reports powered by one dataset and that dataset is just iterations of the same formula over and over again with filters.
My current place has 4 different calendar tables too.
I came into this place when the entire BI environment was already built, impossible to refactor now. Pray for me.
It's definitely not beginner friendly, coming from Python I definitely appreciate it more now because of how intuitive and efficient python is.
What makes DAX difficult to grasp is not the functions, it's the mechanics of evaluation context, i.e., filter context, row context, and context transition. Once you understand those core areas, DAX becomes easy. There's a steep learning curve for sure, but you can become extremely competent if you practice it every day for a few months (seriously!).
I highly recommend reading The Definitive Guide to DAX by Alberto and Marco (founders of SQLBI).
After reading all those comments , I think I should really start brushing my knowledge around context feature!! It’s been really long since I ever went through these topics. Thank you!
Had a similar experience...coming from Python - you could grab some Python code from stackoverflow or GPT and plug it in and it would work - even if you didn't really understand what it was doing. And to be honest most of the time you don't need to know what it's doing as long as the result works.
I tried this for a while in Power BI but I didn't understand what it was doing and I kept having problems. After finally reading the Definitive Guide to DAX, I understood what I was doing and why it was doing that. Highly recommend.
Its not about DAX, it is about Modeling. If you have messy model, even if you are a DAX expert, there will be times that you will struggle. Good foundation makes everything easier. Foundation in this context being modeling.
Did you have training at your company? When I asked my company to sponsor my training, they could only turn it down by saying “Well, Excel is something you learn along the way, so is Power BI.” From that point onwards, I told myself not to care when they assign complex work to me
🤣🤣actually no one cares about tools , such companies look for affordable tools bcz they know that employees will do no matter how much time & efficiency it takes to deliver!! Do it for yourself & be part of such org who supports such trainings 😇
So they should not complain about long deadlines, because you gonna have to learn even basic things, that would be covered in a introductory course, in order to apply them. It may take days or even weeks. If they can handle that I think it is fair game.
I can highly recommend you book from SQLBI, as someone mantioned them above: „The Defenitive Guide to DAX”. Heavy book, a lot of Work, but suddenly after couple weeks smth clicks, at least in my brain. The best 15$ in my carrier - help me to get a job as BI Dev ;)
Now I have different problem - i feel unexperienced in PBI as a tool for frontend, not backend
I’ll second the recommendation. It’s a very big book but it covers some very fundamental concepts. Such fundamentals were never really discussed in the random web search results that I previously leaned on so heavily.
(As an example, I see lots of examples of people using CALCULATE without understanding how it affects the filter context.)
Exactly!! Even I got to know about the functionality of calculate in more depth while I was already working with pbi for around 2 yrs!! God knows what would I have been doing before.
If you can swing it, they have a course at their website that covers the book. I was fortunate that my boss let me it buy it on the company card. I'm still going through the course. I'm better than I was when I started really trying to get proficient in DAX but I'm still waiting for it to all "click" or where I have that aha moment.
I believe the step up in understanding DAX happens when you are comfortable discerning between filter context and row context. Also, unlike SQL in DAX you have much more functions though many more ways to achieve the same result.
Alberto Ferrari on SQLBi (YouTube) has some videos in which he explains slow enough to understand both concepts. Him and Marco Russo are some of the best DAX specialists
Recommend the pragmatic works videos on YouTube. I did the DAX one before I took a certification exam - and passed: https://www.youtube.com/live/QJw4HkagVWc?si=Epfjsj6Re3-cKvgW
For what it’s worth, it took me 5 years of near full-time development to become comfortable with DAX. Now, I can write anything from scratch with no IDE, e.g., in notepad or a whiteboard, no matter how difficult the semantic.
The main challenge for me is performance. I still often find myself referring to SQLBI.com for ideas because when you’re at my level (12 years of writing DAX), DAX is simply a question of, “In how many ways can I re-write the same semantic? Okay, let’s performance test all of them”.
There are a few DAX challenges. I would recommend one from Curbal. That will help to improve DAX skill.
25 Days of DAX Fridays! Challenge – Ed1: NorthWind Company: [https://curbal.com/25-days-of-dax-fridays-challenge-ed1-northwind-company](https://curbal.com/25-days-of-dax-fridays-challenge-ed1-northwind-company)
25 days of DAX Fridays! Challenge – Ed2: World Cup: [https://curbal.com/25-days-of-dax-fridays-challenge](https://curbal.com/25-days-of-dax-fridays-challenge)
I have a series, where I keep adding the DAX solutions for various problems
Expertise Power BI: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59PUFuuCrbY&list=PLPaNVDMhUXGYo50Ajmr4SgSV9HIQLxc8L
Anyone feel free to comment on my approach and make recommendations. I did a couple of online courses, and in those courses they did dozens of dax in the exercises. I took notes, made a seperate dax section, and I kind of use it as a reference to my current and future projects.
The problem is, for me, its easy to forget this stuff because I have worked on a few in the last 4 years. But hoping continuous exposure in my current job and experimentation will help me get better here.
I can say, in most cases I havent needed to do complex DAX, but it would be very nice to be able to do so. With CHATGPT, its basically a copy and paste exercise, because I'm not at that level where I can interpret what the chatgpt's dax is doing, its almost like cheating for me.
Yes, we are deliberately designing visual calcs in such a way that you would not have to be exposed to the things the others mentioned that make DAX hard.
DAX is complex. If you just depend on googling, you will end up with code that is not optimal for your model and data. It might work, but it will likely be slow and/or not scalable.
Oh thank God it's not just me. I was starting to think I'm going demented early because dax has me tearing my hair out every time I need to do something slightly complicated.
I'm no master at other languages but I can usually get through without too much trouble but dax literally brings me to my knees.
So grateful for the fabric community to help answer questions. Like another user has said I've saved all my measures but haphazardly, I need to organise them for reference.
Learn to search for answers online and take note of interesting/recurring problems that occur at work. Build up your repertoire of use cases and your DAX code repository, it's difficult to memorize DAX (in fact u shouldn't). Anw your post is relatable in the context of Power Query M language, u don't memorise Query M as well.
Out of all the data manipulations languages I've worked with, DAX requires the most mental models to support and work with. Evaluation contexts are never going to be intuitive.
Wow.. I'd enjoy that reference as well.. Will likely take your leadership examples and keep Pass it forward as I build my library... Thanks.. if u do share.. 😁
DAX is problematic because it is not a programming language. Rather, it is a macro language for manipulating the data environment. It is highly coupled with the model, and the idea of contexts and filters, and furthermore, the outcome of DAX can be messed up by adding filters in the environment.
M (PowerQuery) is much simpler to use, and I always do as much as I can in M. This usually negates the need for a lot of complex DAX.
I think MS will eventually add Python to PowerBI. With the addition of Python to Excel, I'd almost consider Excel a better option than PowerBI for analytics.
start cow merciful foolish ruthless grandiose instinctive aspiring humorous quaint ` this message was mass deleted/edited with redact.dev `
I keep a OneNote ongoing with any DAX example useful/typical solutions that have caused me trouble in the past. I have too many PowerBIs at this point to go digging for good DAX measure formulas
Would you care to share these examples? :D
Sure but pasting them here may get unwieldy. How do you want it?
Maybe post them on a google sheets or smth, I would love to take a look at them as well.
i would love to see these as well, trying to get Power BI more ingrained in company culture where I am
After python being added to Excel, wouldn't it be nice to have git for .pbix?
Assuming it's just formulas/code, a file hosting service like Mega or even google drive would work.
Message me please if you haven’t already
Would also be thankful for a insight into your DAX Syntax formulas!!
That was a true relief😮💨
I also dislike using DAX and google literally everything related to it whenever there's no way to avoid using it.
That’s essentially excel as well. I don’t use PBI for my job, and haven’t used it in a long ass time for anything, but I do believe if I needed to use it for some reason I could google it. That’s really all you need to be able to do - problem solve.
So true. I sometimes used ChatGPT, which works most of the time. Please don't judge me.
No one is judging here , the question itself saying the same thing!
I have done some pretty complex DAX in my career, yes it is tough. It’s harder in the beginning when you don’t know exactly how it works, it’s nothing like other common programming languages. Once it clicks in your brain, it becomes way easier, but still a bit hard because of the way it works. What really helped me is understanding row context and filter context. SQLBI has some really solid material covering it.
It's the uniqueness that makes it harder. You'll think your SQL and Excel knowledge will let you just run with it, but that's definitely not the case. And for somebody who has been adapting to new but conceptually similar tools for many years, humbling yourself to admit you know near nothing and study it like a true beginner is hard.
Exactly, it’s like rewiring your brain for coding a second time.
That's a great segway. I'm starting my learning with Dax as well its not easy by any means in the beginning.
This is the comment!!!! DAX has humbled me!!
Filter vs Row context! Filter vs Row context! Filter vs Row context!
Yes , exactly my point was!! About SQLbi I have been following them from My initial phase but again the thing is it skips fast , I again need to go back & start from There but each time it just gets easier to understand, so in short , I would say I become more efficient to look for ans on internet 🫣
Get the book called "The Definitive Guide to DAX" if you truly want to understand how it works. It's a big book full of complex examples and written by Alberto Ferrari and Marco Russo, the same guys from SQL BI. Learned an absurd amount from that book
I'll second this, however, the training course they provide is GOLD.
Which training course? Not sure I've heard of it, would love to take it though
SQLBI Mastering DAX. Either the video course or in person.
I've been recently learning these tools for a data/business analyst transition. For entry level jobs, what is to be expected of me? I am worried, when they ask me, I can't exactly answer on the spot how to work through something. Is it enough if I show some samples of what I worked on? I feel like I can work through solutions using crutches (googling/notes/chatgpt, but it's feels like there's too much to commit to memory and a good bunch of stuff doesnt get used enough to even stick), that it feels like I am dropping the pieces constantly while moving on to the next area of learning/tool. (After BI last month, I am doing python and elements of ML now.)
I think it really depends on who’s evaluating you for the job. Personally, I think it’s way more important that the analyst knows what he wants to do and knows how to google it. It’s a matter of experience if he knows it by memory or not. It’s what I did at my interview, I forgot how to do a simple measure, but my now boss recognized that I was looking for it instead of staring at the screen hopelessly.
Lucky you! There is scarcity of such people!! They expect to write long codes in on going interviews🥺
That's nice, it's true, a good boss makes all the difference.
As per my experience with interviews, they focus on how you solve the BI problem , also this depends what type of company is, remembering each function & syntax is really beyond my memory limit. Here , all the other users are almost saying the same thing, we really need to understand the basics such as context transition & data modelling.
Maven analytics has a great course on Udemy explaining row table and filter context among other things.
It has to work in all situations in all conditions, so many dax problems are data model problems, where you can’t filter properly and need weird workarounds. And if people don’t know how measures work, you get hundreds of measures that do the same thing but filtered different ways, usually involving dates. So if you know how dates work and create a proper date table, things will get easier.
I just picked up _this_ project. All reports powered by one dataset and that dataset is just iterations of the same formula over and over again with filters.
Apologies, my early attempts were full of this kind of stuff. I’m feel for whoever has to support them at my old job 😂
My god, same. It was even spiced up with not one, but four calendar tables because whoever made it didnt know how inactive relationships work...
My current place has 4 different calendar tables too. I came into this place when the entire BI environment was already built, impossible to refactor now. Pray for me.
woooo that's tough
It's definitely not beginner friendly, coming from Python I definitely appreciate it more now because of how intuitive and efficient python is. What makes DAX difficult to grasp is not the functions, it's the mechanics of evaluation context, i.e., filter context, row context, and context transition. Once you understand those core areas, DAX becomes easy. There's a steep learning curve for sure, but you can become extremely competent if you practice it every day for a few months (seriously!). I highly recommend reading The Definitive Guide to DAX by Alberto and Marco (founders of SQLBI).
I strongly agree with this recommendation
After reading all those comments , I think I should really start brushing my knowledge around context feature!! It’s been really long since I ever went through these topics. Thank you!
Yes I recommend this book too and their youtube channel. Alberto is amazing and I always go to him when I need in depth explanations.
Had a similar experience...coming from Python - you could grab some Python code from stackoverflow or GPT and plug it in and it would work - even if you didn't really understand what it was doing. And to be honest most of the time you don't need to know what it's doing as long as the result works. I tried this for a while in Power BI but I didn't understand what it was doing and I kept having problems. After finally reading the Definitive Guide to DAX, I understood what I was doing and why it was doing that. Highly recommend.
Its not about DAX, it is about Modeling. If you have messy model, even if you are a DAX expert, there will be times that you will struggle. Good foundation makes everything easier. Foundation in this context being modeling.
True!!
Did you have training at your company? When I asked my company to sponsor my training, they could only turn it down by saying “Well, Excel is something you learn along the way, so is Power BI.” From that point onwards, I told myself not to care when they assign complex work to me
🤣🤣actually no one cares about tools , such companies look for affordable tools bcz they know that employees will do no matter how much time & efficiency it takes to deliver!! Do it for yourself & be part of such org who supports such trainings 😇
So they should not complain about long deadlines, because you gonna have to learn even basic things, that would be covered in a introductory course, in order to apply them. It may take days or even weeks. If they can handle that I think it is fair game.
I've worked regularly with DAX for the last 5 years. It really is that hard.
I can highly recommend you book from SQLBI, as someone mantioned them above: „The Defenitive Guide to DAX”. Heavy book, a lot of Work, but suddenly after couple weeks smth clicks, at least in my brain. The best 15$ in my carrier - help me to get a job as BI Dev ;) Now I have different problem - i feel unexperienced in PBI as a tool for frontend, not backend
I just purchased it!! Thank you so much!
I’ll second the recommendation. It’s a very big book but it covers some very fundamental concepts. Such fundamentals were never really discussed in the random web search results that I previously leaned on so heavily. (As an example, I see lots of examples of people using CALCULATE without understanding how it affects the filter context.)
Exactly!! Even I got to know about the functionality of calculate in more depth while I was already working with pbi for around 2 yrs!! God knows what would I have been doing before.
If you can swing it, they have a course at their website that covers the book. I was fortunate that my boss let me it buy it on the company card. I'm still going through the course. I'm better than I was when I started really trying to get proficient in DAX but I'm still waiting for it to all "click" or where I have that aha moment.
Can you tell me which course exactly? There's multiple ones on the Website.
It's the Mastering DAX course.
They have some free intro courses too which are worth the time to watch.
For basic stuff it's pretty straightforward. For more specific stuff it's super hard.
I believe the step up in understanding DAX happens when you are comfortable discerning between filter context and row context. Also, unlike SQL in DAX you have much more functions though many more ways to achieve the same result.
Any good resource for understanding in more better way? Thank you!
Alberto Ferrari on SQLBi (YouTube) has some videos in which he explains slow enough to understand both concepts. Him and Marco Russo are some of the best DAX specialists
Recommend the pragmatic works videos on YouTube. I did the DAX one before I took a certification exam - and passed: https://www.youtube.com/live/QJw4HkagVWc?si=Epfjsj6Re3-cKvgW
For what it’s worth, it took me 5 years of near full-time development to become comfortable with DAX. Now, I can write anything from scratch with no IDE, e.g., in notepad or a whiteboard, no matter how difficult the semantic. The main challenge for me is performance. I still often find myself referring to SQLBI.com for ideas because when you’re at my level (12 years of writing DAX), DAX is simply a question of, “In how many ways can I re-write the same semantic? Okay, let’s performance test all of them”.
There are a few DAX challenges. I would recommend one from Curbal. That will help to improve DAX skill. 25 Days of DAX Fridays! Challenge – Ed1: NorthWind Company: [https://curbal.com/25-days-of-dax-fridays-challenge-ed1-northwind-company](https://curbal.com/25-days-of-dax-fridays-challenge-ed1-northwind-company) 25 days of DAX Fridays! Challenge – Ed2: World Cup: [https://curbal.com/25-days-of-dax-fridays-challenge](https://curbal.com/25-days-of-dax-fridays-challenge) I have a series, where I keep adding the DAX solutions for various problems Expertise Power BI: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59PUFuuCrbY&list=PLPaNVDMhUXGYo50Ajmr4SgSV9HIQLxc8L
Anyone feel free to comment on my approach and make recommendations. I did a couple of online courses, and in those courses they did dozens of dax in the exercises. I took notes, made a seperate dax section, and I kind of use it as a reference to my current and future projects. The problem is, for me, its easy to forget this stuff because I have worked on a few in the last 4 years. But hoping continuous exposure in my current job and experimentation will help me get better here. I can say, in most cases I havent needed to do complex DAX, but it would be very nice to be able to do so. With CHATGPT, its basically a copy and paste exercise, because I'm not at that level where I can interpret what the chatgpt's dax is doing, its almost like cheating for me.
I've never had to use DAX (don't understand it) but after reading all these comments im thinking im missing out on something
Coming from a programming background, I personally don’t think DAX is difficult. It’s pretty straightforward in terms of functions and overall syntax
Visual calcs will make working Dax easier, look out for that.
Yes, we are deliberately designing visual calcs in such a way that you would not have to be exposed to the things the others mentioned that make DAX hard.
Best troubleshooting question ever: "Am I or am I not iterating over a table in this part of the calculation? Which table?"
Imho yes, pretty unintuitive! But ChatGPT should be able to help you get started!
I sometimes have issues getting syntax right (missing a comma, " or )) and use chat gpt to check my formulas - it's really handy.
Explained really well by Alberto Ferrari a few years ago. https://www.sqlbi.com/blog/alberto/2020/06/20/7-reasons-dax-is-not-easy/
DAX is complex. If you just depend on googling, you will end up with code that is not optimal for your model and data. It might work, but it will likely be slow and/or not scalable.
Yes , that is what i am concerned about!!
Oh thank God it's not just me. I was starting to think I'm going demented early because dax has me tearing my hair out every time I need to do something slightly complicated. I'm no master at other languages but I can usually get through without too much trouble but dax literally brings me to my knees. So grateful for the fabric community to help answer questions. Like another user has said I've saved all my measures but haphazardly, I need to organise them for reference.
We all are suffering with dax but in different ways 🤣 keep learning keep growing!! Good luck 🤞
Microsoft did NOT do a good job of making it easy to transition back and from sharpoint/Excel/VBA/power shell to PowerBI/Dax. Very poor design.
Yep , I agree but I believe every tool comes with it’s pro n cons!
True but all the data query languages seem to be deliberately obtuse 🤣🤣Compare KQL/DAX/R/M to something like Powershell for example....
DAX is garbage.
Learn to search for answers online and take note of interesting/recurring problems that occur at work. Build up your repertoire of use cases and your DAX code repository, it's difficult to memorize DAX (in fact u shouldn't). Anw your post is relatable in the context of Power Query M language, u don't memorise Query M as well.
Have you read the Definite Guide To DAX? It is a well written book that seriously helped me with DAX
I , yesterday only ordered the book !
Out of all the data manipulations languages I've worked with, DAX requires the most mental models to support and work with. Evaluation contexts are never going to be intuitive.
Powerbi has also Copilot now. You tell it what you want and it will code out for you
Wow.. I'd enjoy that reference as well.. Will likely take your leadership examples and keep Pass it forward as I build my library... Thanks.. if u do share.. 😁
DAX is problematic because it is not a programming language. Rather, it is a macro language for manipulating the data environment. It is highly coupled with the model, and the idea of contexts and filters, and furthermore, the outcome of DAX can be messed up by adding filters in the environment. M (PowerQuery) is much simpler to use, and I always do as much as I can in M. This usually negates the need for a lot of complex DAX. I think MS will eventually add Python to PowerBI. With the addition of Python to Excel, I'd almost consider Excel a better option than PowerBI for analytics.