Javier Guillén wrote several blog post about how to implement certain common calculations in PowerPivot. It is interesting to read his posts not only because of the solutions he propose, but also because he uses several techniques that can be applied in other scenarios.

Here is a list of posts and reasons to read:

  • Calculating Moving Averages in PowerPivot/DAX: a classical scenario solved by using just a measure and in a very clean way (the average is correctly calculated also when the period available is shorter than the standard period defined for the moving average)
  • Calculating Median in PowerPivot/DAX: this is the same calculation I solved in another post with a calculated masure, but Javier shows how to implement in with a measure – this will be much useful with BISM Tabular, whenever you cannot change the data model on the client side like you do easily in PowerPivot by adding a calculated column.
  • Quartile, Percentile and Median in PowerPivot/DAX: use an MDX calculated member in a PivotTable of PowerPivot data, with the help of OLAP PivotTable extensions. Do you know that you can inject a DAX expression in a calculated member using this same technique? Probably not, it is not documented anywhere but it is absolutely supported – more about this in a future post!