Pro DAX and Data Modeling in Power BI: Creating the Perfect Semantic Layer to Drive Your Dashboard Analytics

Develop powerful data models that bind data from disparate sources into a coherent whole. Then extend your data models using DAX–the query language that underpins Power BI–to create reusable measures to deliver finely-crafted custom calculations in your dashboards.

This book starts off teaching you how to define and enhance the core structures of your data model to make it a true semantic layer that transforms complex data into familiar business terms. You’ll learn how to create calculated columns to solve basic analytical challenges. Then you’ll move up to mastering DAX measures to finely slice and dice your data.

The book also shows how to handle temporal analysis in Power BI using a Date dimension. You will see how DAX Time Intelligence functions can simplify your analysis of data over time. Finally, the book shows how to extend DAX to filter and calculate datasets and develop DAX table functions and variables to handle complex queries.

What You Will Learn

• Create clear and efficient data models that support in-depth analytics
• Define core attributes such as data types and standardized formatting consistently throughout a data model
• Define cross-filtering settings to enhance the data model
• Make use of DAX to create calculated columns and custom tables
• Extend your data model with custom calculations and reusable measures using DAX
• Perform time-based analysis using a Date dimension and Time Intelligence functions

Who This Book Is For

Everyone from the CEO to the Business Intelligence developer and from BI and Data architects and analysts to power users and IT managers can use this book to outshine the competition and create the data framework that they need and interactive dashboards using Power BI