Highlights from tonight’s meetup with Phil Seamark

Tonight we had a great presentation with Phil Seamark on DAX as detailed in the meetup group.

I wanted to summarise some of the highlights here –

Phil showed off the below features of DAX.  I tried to link to blog posts from RADACAD

•  Generate data using the randbetween function
•  Generate a date table using calendar function -- More information can be found on the blog post here
• Generate a sales table with fictitious data again using the RANDBetween , generate, addcolumns,  filter, rand etc functions.
• Create a summary table using the summarisecolumns function. He also explained the advantages of the summary table.
• He also discussed when to use a calculated column and calculated measure.  Demonstrated the differences between the two very clearly.  More information can be found on a blog post from Reza here
• Next he introduced the DAX Studio.  This is a great tool that can be used in conjunction with Excel and Power BI. There are many advantages of using the DAX Studio.  Some of them are Viewing your open Power BI data model, Formatting your DAX code, use the DMVs to analyse the performance.  You can also look at the Query Plans and server timings.
• Next he showed how you can use SQL Server Management Studio to open the Power BI desktop model by connecting to the Analysis services Database that the Power BI Desktop dynamically creates. You can browse through the Tabular model of the database using the Sql Server Management Studio.

Some great questions were also asked after the presentation like

• What is the difference between Summarise and summarisecolumn function.
• Can we export the Power BI Desktop model and create SSAS model using Sql Sever Management Studio.
• What do you think of the Common Data Services ?

And a few more…

I definitely learned a lot in this session.