Definitive Guide to DAX, The: Business intelligence for Microsoft Power BI, SQL Server Analysis Services, and Excel, 2nd Edition (2025)

This comprehensive and authoritative guide will teach you the DAX language for business intelligence, data modeling, and analytics. Leading Microsoft BI consultants Marco Russo and Alberto Ferrari help you master everything from table functions through advanced code and model optimization. You’ll learn exactly what happens under the hood when you run a DAX expression, how DAX behaves differently from other languages, and how to use this knowledge to write fast, robust code. If you want to leverage all of DAX’s remarkable power and flexibility, this no-compromise “deep dive” is exactly what you need.

Perform powerful data analysis with DAX for Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Services, Excel, and Power BI

• Master core DAX concepts, including calculated columns, measures, and error handling
• Understand evaluation contexts and the CALCULATE and CALCULATETABLE functions
• Perform time-based calculations: YTD, MTD, previous year, working days, and more
• Work with expanded tables, complex functions, and elaborate DAX expressions
• Perform calculations over hierarchies, including parent/child hierarchies
• Use DAX to express diverse and unusual relationships
• Measure DAX query performance with SQL Server Profiler and DAX Studio

Online Sample Chapter

Introducing DAX

Sample Pages

Download the sample pages (includes Chapter 4, 17, and the index)

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• Chapter 1: What is DAX?
• Chapter 2: Introducing DAX
• Chapter 3: Using basic table functions
• Chapter 4: Understanding evaluation contexts
• Chapter 5: Understanding CALCULATE and CALCULATETABLE
• Chapter 6: DAX examples
• Chapter 7: Time intelligence calculations
• Chapter 8: Statistical functions
• Chapter 9: Advanced table functions
• Chapter 10: Advanced evaluation context
• Chapter 11: Handling hierarchies
• Chapter 12: Advanced relationships
• Chapter 13: The VertiPaq engine
• Chapter 14: Optimizing data models
• Chapter 15: Analyzing DAX query plans
• Chapter 16: Optimizing DAX
• Index

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Features

• Only advanced DAX book on the market
• The authors' stellar reputation, which is largely based on high-quality books they have already authored
• The quickly increasing interest in technical content for BI professionals

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