Implementing Common

Business Calculations in DAX

Chris Webb

chris@crossjoin.co.uk
www.crossjoin.co.uk

Who am I?
Chris Webb (chris@crossjoin.co.uk)
Independent consultant specialising in
Analysis Services and MDX (and PowerPivot
and DAX!): http://www.crossjoin.co.uk
Blogger: http://cwebbbi.spaces.live.com
Author:
MDX Solutions 2nd Edition
Expert Cube Development With Analysis
Services 2008

DAX Calculations

Agenda
What is DAX and why should I learn
it?
Calculated columns and calculated
measures
Row context and filter context
Calculate()
Values()
Demos, demos, demos!
DAX Calculations

What is DAX?
DAX is the new calculation language for
PowerPivot
MDX is still the query language

It is a multidimensional calculation language

like MDX, but the design goals were:
Make it easy to do common calculations (easier
than MDX)
Make it easy to use for Excel power users, hence
the Excel-based syntax

DAX expressions are limited to a single

(though often very long) line of code
DAX Calculations

Why learn DAX?

Your power users will be learning it, and youll need to
understand whats going on in their PowerPivot
models
Its very likely that it will be used in future versions of
SSAS possibly as an alternative to MDX for some
calculations
We love both DAX and MDX, and MDX is not going away. The
challenge for us is to bring them together. We have some
promising directions. That said I think youll see DAX evolving in
new important directions that MDX will never cover, and a large
and growing portion of the calc work will be done in DAX. So my
advice stands: all you guys need to become DAX gurus
ASAP.
Amir Netz, Microsoft

DAX Calculations

DAX Syntax and Functions

DAX syntax is based on Excel syntax
Only thing to watch out for is you need to use && and ||
for AND and OR

Supports around 80 Excel functions

Uses its own data types
In Excel you only have numbers or strings

Uses the concept of BLANK rather than NULL

PowerPivot BLANKs behave in exactly the same way as
SSAS nulls

The UI for editing DAX is terrible can use

NotePad++ and Colin Banfields DAX language
template instead
DAX Calculations

Referencing Columns and Measures

DAX usually requires fully qualified
names, eg:
MyTable[MyColumn]
MyTable[MyMeasure]

You can use unqualified names in

calculated column definitions, when
referring to other columns in the
same table
DAX cannot use standard Excel cell
references to data elsewhere in the

DAX Calculations

Calculated Columns
DAX can be used to create two types of
calculation: calculated columns and calculated
measures
Calculated columns are derived columns in a
PowerPivot table
Are defined inside the PowerPivot UI
After they are created, they behave like any other
column
Their values are calculated immediately after the real
data has been loaded into PowerPivot
Can be used to do basic ETL work, eg concatenating
first and last names, deriving years from dates etc
DAX Calculations

Calculated Measures
Calculated measures provide the numeric
values you see aggregated in pivot tables
All measures are calculated measures in
PowerPivot!
Are defined within the pivot table in Excel
Are calculated at query time

Basic sum, count, min, max and average

calculated measures can be created from the
right-click menu
More advanced calculated measures can be
created by entering your own DAX expression
DAX Calculations

Row Context and Filter

Context
Row context refers to the current row where a
calculation is taking place
There is no row context without a DAX aggregation function

Filter context refers to the currently selected item on

each column on each table
Very similar to the CurrentMember function in MDX, but
handles multiselect elegantly
Filter context follows the one-to-many relationships
between tables

Both row and filter context must be taken into

account when writing expressions for calculated
measures

DAX Calculations

Row and Filter Context

Examples

DAX Calculations

Filter Context

DAX Calculations

Filter Context

DAX Calculations

Row Context

DAX Calculations

Row Context with

Calculation

DAX Calculations

Row Context with

Calculation

DAX Calculations

Calculate()
The Calculate() function is the key to all
advanced DAX calculation functionality
Signature: Calculate(Expression, SetFilter1,
SetFilter2,...)
It allows any expression to be evaluated in a
specific filter context
It works as follows:
Modifies the current filter context according to the
SetFilter arguments you pass in
Shifts the row context onto the filter context
Evaluates your expression in the new filter context
DAX Calculations

Calculate()
SetFilter arguments can either be:
Boolean expressions, eg
CALCULATE(COUNTROWS(), Consultants[Skill]="MDX")
Table functions, so the filter context for any table is
set to the rows returned by the table function, eg
CALCULATE(COUNTROWS(), FILTER(Consultants,
Consultants[Measure1]>3))

Useful table functions include:

Values(), which returns a list of distinct values in a
column in the current filter context
All(), which returns a list of all the values in a column
ignoring filter context

DAX Calculations

Ratio to All and Ratio to

Parent
A common example of a ratio to all and ratio to parent
calculations is a market shares
The numerator for this kind of calculation is easy:
SUM('Consultants'[Measure1])
The denominator is the all or parent total
To get the total value of a measure with all filter context
cleared we need to use All(Table), eg:
CALCULATE(SUM('Consultants'[Measure1]),
ALL(Consultants))
To get the total value of a measure with filter context for
just one column removed, we need All(Column), eg:
CALCULATE(SUM('Consultants'[Measure1]),
ALL(Consultants[Consultant]))
DAX Calculations

Ratio to All and Ratio to

Parent
This makes the final calculations:
=SUM('Consultants'[Measure1])/
CALCULATE(SUM('Consultants'[Measur
e1]), ALL(Consultants))
and
=SUM(Consultants[Measure1])/
CALCULATE(SUM('Consultants'[Measur
e1]), ALL(Consultants[Consultant]))
DAX Calculations

Previous Year Growth

Basic algorithm to calculate year-on-year
growth is:
((Sales for Current Time Period)
(Sales for Same Time Period in Previous Year))
/
(Sales for Same Time Period in Previous Year)
The big problem is how to calculate sales for
the same time period in the previous year in
the absence of SSAS-like hierarchies?
DAX Calculations

Previous Year Growth

The following is the best approach:
=CALCULATE(SUM(FactInternetSales[SalesAmount])
, DATEADD(DimDate[FullDateAlternateKey], -1, YEAR)
, ALL(DimDate))
Works by:

Finding all the dates in the current year

Shifting each date back one year
Setting this as the filter context
Summing SalesAmount for these dates

BUT will only give correct results if you have a

complete set of dates in your year!

DAX Calculations

Previous Year Growth

Always a good idea in DAX to break complex
calculations up into a series of simpler calculated
measures
So, if we use the previous formula to define a
calculated measure called Previous Year Sales, the
growth calculation becomes:
=IF(FactInternetSales[Previous Year Sales]=0
, BLANK()
,(SUM(FactInternetSales[SalesAmount]) FactInternetSales[Previous Year Sales]) /
FactInternetSales[Previous Year Sales])
Notice, like in MDX, we need to trap division by zero
DAX Calculations

Rules for Time Intelligence functions

Five rules for using Time Intelligence functions:
1. Never use the datetime column from the fact table in
time functions.
2. Always create a separate Time table, and make sure
it contains complete years
3. Create relationships between fact tables and the
Time table.
4. Make sure that relationships are based on a datetime
column (and NOT based on another artificial key
column).
5. The datetime column in the Time table should be at
day granularity (without fractions of a day).
DAX Calculations

If you dont follow the

rules...
As weve already seen, not having complete
years makes it hard to do relative time
calculations
In my example, since I joined on a surrogate
key and not a DateTime key, I needed to add
All(DimDate) to my calculation
You cant use RELATED() to bring the date
down to the fact table either, because this
causes a circular reference error!
Need to either alter the underlying relational table
or view, or import the date dimension table twice
DAX Calculations

Year to Date
Luckily there are many built-in time
intelligence functions for common calculations
Eg for doing year-to-date sums, we have
TotalYTD:
=TOTALYTD(
SUM(FactInternetSales[SalesAmount])
,DimDate[FullDateAlternateKey]
, ALL(DimDate))
In this case, TotalYTD is a variant of Calculate
with some filters set automatically
DAX Calculations

Total to Date
A total-to-date gets the running total from
the first date we have in our data
No built-in function for it

We need to use Calculate and set the filter

to all dates from the first ever date to the
last date in the current context
We can use DATESBETWEEN to get this date
range
The first date can be got by using BLANK()
The last date with the LASTDATE() function
DAX Calculations

Total to Date
The final version is:
=CALCULATE(
SUM(FactInternetSales[SalesAmount])
,
DATESBETWEEN('DimDate'[FullDateAlter
nateKey]
, BLANK()
,
LASTDATE( 'DimDate'[FullDateAlternateK
ey]))
, All('DimDate'))

DAX Calculations

Values() like CurrentMember but

better!
The Values() function acts like the MDX
CurrentMember function
But it is better: Values() returns a table, so it
handles multiselect
Although when the table it returns only contains one
row we can still do a direct comparison with another
value

The Distinct() function works exactly the same

way as Values() but:
Values() will return the Unknown Member
Distinct() will not

DAX Calculations

Distinct Count
To find a distinct count, we need to
count the rows in a table containing
only the distinct values from a
column
The Values() function returns such a
table
Because its a table, all we need to
do is count the number of rows in it:
=COUNTROWS(VALUES(Consultants[
Skill]))

DAX Calculations

Final Thoughts
DAX does the easy stuff very easily
DAX does the medium-hard stuff well too

Not sure if power users will get it, but

Its easier than MDX
Its more SQL-like, so more developers will get it
Its more elegant than MDX in many ways, eg
multiselect

DAX does not do the really hard stuff well at all

So for financial apps, for example, MDX still wins
But for how long?

I like DAX a lot

DAX Calculations

Links

http://blogs.msdn.com/powerpivot/
http://www.powerpivot.com/
http://powerpivotgeek.com
http://powerpivottwins.com/
http://powerpivotpro.com/
http://www.powerpivot-info.com/
http://cwebbbi.spaces.live.com
http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US
/sqlkjpowerpivotforexcel/threads
http://www.business-intelligence.kdejonge.net
/
http://sqlblog.com/blogs/marco_russo/

DAX Calculations

Thanks!

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