Hands-On Business Intelligence with DAX - ebook

Implement business intelligence (BI), data modeling, and data analytics within Microsoft products such as Power BI, SQL Server, and Excel

Key Features

• Understand the ins and outs of DAX expressions and querying functions with the help of easy-to-follow examples
• Manipulate data of varying complexity and optimize BI workflows to extract key insights
• Create, monitor, and improve the performance of models by writing clean and robust DAX queries

Book Description

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.

What you will learn

• Understand DAX, from the basics through to advanced topics, and learn to build effective data models
• Write and use DAX functions and expressions with the help of hands-on examples
• Discover how to handle errors in your DAX code, and avoid unwanted results
• Load data into a data model using Power BI, Excel Power Pivot, and SSAS Tabular
• Cover DAX functions such as date, time, and time intelligence using code examples
• Gain insights into data by using DAX to create new information
• Understand the DAX VertiPaq engine and how it can help you optimize data models

Who this book is for

This book is for data analysts, business analysts, BI developers, or SQL users who want to make the best use of DAX in the BI and data analytics domain with the help of examples. Some understanding of BI concepts is mandatory to fully understand the concepts covered in the book.

Ian Horne is head of data services with a global organization. He is a business intelligence (BI) professional with over 30 years of experience and specializes in the design, development, and maintenance of corporate databases, data warehouses, associated ETL processes, and end user reporting. He has extensive knowledge of the Microsoft BI stack, including SQL Server, SSRS, SSAS, Power BI, and, of course, DAX. Ian holds a diploma in computing and a Bachelor of Science degree from the Open University. In his spare time, he creates training videos on Power BI, DAX, and other data-related matters, which he shares through his YouTube channel, Data World TV.