DAX supports dates starting in 1900 and while teaching DAX I always explain that DAX manages dates like Excel, which is the reason why these limitations exist. Actually, this is true – but answering to a comment today I realized…  Read more

DAX has many time intelligence functions that are often redundant, offering different shorter syntaxes for longer more generic functions. However, sometimes the shorter syntax could be dangerous, as I explain in this blog post where I suggest using CALCULATE and…  Read more

UPDATE 2019-10-18 Because of a bug in YEARFRAC function described in the original blog post and reported by Dominik Petri (thanks!), there are cases where the previous solution does not work well. Moreoever, YEARFRAC is not that fast, so a…  Read more

I received a question about how to implement the equivalent of a DISTINCTCOUNTX function in DAX. Well, such a function doesn’t exist in DAX, but imagine you want to write something like: The corresponding measure working in DAX is: In…  Read more

If you have a fiscal year starting in March, you can have a problem using the time intelligence functions in DAX. For example, by using February 28, the fiscal year starts on February 29th in leap years. By using February…  Read more

In the latest weeks I received several requests to support a different color for variable names in DAX Formatter, just as the formula editor available in Power BI. I finally implemented a solution that I consider a workaround, because of…  Read more

A recurring issue for Power BI users writing DAX code is that column filter removal might have an unexpected behavior when the Sort by Column is active on the column. I covered this topic in an article related to RANKX,…  Read more

If you used the DATESYTD and TOTALYTD functions in DAX, you might have noticed that the optional parameter year_end_date is a string defining the last day of the year. The default is December 31, so this parameter is used only…  Read more

When you create a data model in Power BI, you should consider how to properly use naming convention and what columns to include, in order to improve usability and performance. This article provides a quick list of best practices valid…  Read more

Mar 19, 2018

VertiPaq vs ColumnStore Comparison

SQL 2012 gives you two different xVelocity engines, with different capabilities and different scenarios of implementation, the paper will help you choose the right one or, at least, raise your curiosity about performing more tests on your specific scenario.  Read more