SQLBI Newsletter #238

NEW ARTICLE

Understanding Group By Columns in Power BI

This article describes how Power BI uses the Group By Columns attribute of a column and how you can leverage it in specific scenarios.
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DAX PATTERNS

Semi-additive calculations

Calculations reporting values at the start or the end of a time period are quite the challenge for any BI developer, and DAX is no exception. These measures are not hard to compute; the complicated part is understanding the desired behavior precisely. These calculations do not work by aggregating values throughout the entire period, as you would typically do for sales amounts. Instead, the calculations should return the value at the beginning or the end of a selected time period. These calculations are also known as semi-additive calculations.
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#238 · Mar 2023

LEARNING

Course calendar

Mastering DAX

	Mar 21-23 - Dallas
	Apr 17-19 - Copenhagen
	May 17-19 - Seattle
	May 22-24 - Chicago
	Jun 14-16 - Perth
	Jun 20-22 - Sydney
	Jun 26-28 - Brisbane
	Jun 27-29 - Amsterdam

Data modeling

	Apr 18-20 - Amsterdam

video courses

CLASSROOM COURSES

Registrations open for Seattle and Chicago

The workshop in Dallas, TX is sold-out, but Marco will return in May for two Mastering DAX classroom courses in the US!

Hurry and book your seat before the courses sell out!
Overall schedule

BI-WEEKLY NEWS DIGEST

Latest news

	• It depends: best practices and optimizations in Power BI This is so important that it must be in pole position. A best practice is a default choice for patterns and anti-patterns. Optimizations are specific choices to improve performance that must be validated case by case. Do not confuse optimizations with best practices! Feb 28, 2023 · Kurt Buhler
	• Query parallelization helps to boost Power BI dataset performance in DirectQuery mode Power BI can send multiple SQL storage engine queries in parallel for the same DAX query. It is an optimization that will help when you use DirectQuery (life is hard when you cannot import data, we know). Mar 2, 2023 · Microsoft
	• The “Unknown Date” Dilemma If you don't know a date, a blank is better than an arbitrary date in the future (or in the past). It's not Kimball, OK, but this is for a DAX query, not a SQL query. Mar 4, 2023 · Johnny Winter
	• Text search performance in Power BI The DAX functions CONTAINSSTRING and SEARCH perform much better when Power BI creates a temporary index. But the index is created only when several conditions are met. You might discover that a small detail is blocking your index from being created! Feb 5, 2023 · Chris Webb
	• The good, the bad, and the ugly of a data lakehouse Just because something is new does not necessarily mean it is better than what you have today. Or perhaps it is, but for someone else. A quick reference to the pros and cons of a data lakehouse. Mar 4, 2023 · Teo Lachev
	• What is Data Security? The best recap of row-level security (RLS) and object-level security (OLS) for Power BI datasets and Analysis Services databases is in... the Tabular Editor documentation! These also work with the free Tabular Editor 2. Mar 2, 2023 · Kurt Buhler

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