Alberto and I recorded an unplugged session to talk about the new edition of the Mastering DAX Video Course. You can watch it above, but if you prefer a quick read, here are some thoughts.
The question we heard the most over the years was some version of “where do I start?” People kept telling us that our material was great but too advanced, that you needed another book before ours. That was fair, and it pushed us to rethink the whole approach. This edition starts from zero. Well, almost. We still assume you know Power BI Desktop, but when it comes to DAX, we build everything from the ground up, at a calmer pace, with new ways to explain things like the filter context.
The training ended up being more than 30 hours, which is a lot. But we designed it so that you do not have to finish it. Wherever you stop, you already know something useful. If you reach halfway (chapter 10), you have a solid level for most real-world scenarios. The rest is there to further improve your skills and for when you need it.
We are also quite excited about the new modules on user-defined functions and calendar-based time intelligence. User-defined functions in particular will change the way people write and maintain DAX in the coming years, including how AI tools interact with DAX code. That is a topic we got into during the video, and it is worth hearing Alberto’s take on it.
A few things we did not include in this edition: optimization and VertiPaq internals are gone. They have their own book now. Honestly, if you write good DAX and follow the basics (like filter columns, not tables), you rarely need to optimize anything. DAX is simple, but not easy. It takes practice, and the exercises (coming soon after the training ships) are there to help with that.
The unplugged video has a few other moments that did not make it into this recap: some about what it is like to record 30 hours of technical content in a foreign language, and some that are just fun to watch. What are you waiting for? Watch the video, and enjoy DAX!