This course needs to be updated. In addition, the format of this course does not lend itself well for online learning. Finally, it is ridiculous to pay $300 for a course with an expiration date for access. All online courses allow you full access to a completed course, with no expiration. I am a fan of the instructors and they are truly DAX gurus. But this course is mediocre.

The course subject and topics covered is really interesting and great explanation. However, it is really frustrating so far as you cannot complete this course unless you know DAX, and I'm not talking about the free dax course, it needs to go higher because it is assumed you understand how dax and each of it's functions work in order to complete each of the tasks/challenges at the end of each module. That was never made clear when buying the course! It should be clearly stated that you should either complete one of the more advanced DAX courses first, or take a quick self test on DAX questions to ensure your level is high enough before buying this course.

• – Hi Robert, we're sorry you feel this way. The purpose of the course is to show what is the right way to create a data model in order to simplify the DAX code required. Most of the DAX code shown in the course is actually what is required in case you do not have a proper data model. Once this first goal is achieved (understanding what is the right data model), then you have to transform the source data in case it doesn't fit the model. There are many tools you can use for that: SQL queries, ETL tools, Power Query (with M language). Sometimes you can use DAX, even though this is not necessarily the best tool for the job, maybe with the exception of some data model based on snapshot tables. Our experience is that knowing the right data model is a very useful skill for Power BI users, even though they don't know data tools and languages and don't want to / cannot spend time to learn them, because they can ask for the data in a proper format from someone else, maybe a co-worker in the company for example. If you want to achieve proficiency in data transformation, you need to use Power Query/M or SQL or other commercial ETL Tools (Informatica, Integration Services, Azure Data Factory, and many others). However, knowing these tools without having a goal (like the star schema we discuss in the course) could lead to models that solve the problem for a specific report and not for a generic semantic model, as a Power BI model can be. We made the choice to show some transformation in DAX because it was the easiest to use and deploy for the examples. The alternative would have required a more complex setup for the data sources, with the risk of losing time with configuration details while the focus should be on the concepts contained in the course. Please, contact us at info (at) sqlbi (dot) com if you want to provide additional feedback about the tools you would have liked to see to perform data transformation. We are always looking for feedback that can help us improve the content. We also hope that this explanation will help other readers that evaluate this course. Thanks!
  Reply by SQLBI (Jan 20, 2020)