Learning DAX by translating examples from CALCULATE syntax to the VAR/RETURN syntax.

I'm going through The Definitive Guide to DAX (2nd ed.) by Marco Russo and Alberto Ferrari. The code examples can be found here.

My point of view is not to say that you shouldn't use CALCULATE in your DAX code. However, I found that the VAR/RETURN syntax (that you can see examples of in the .pbix files in this repo) is more intuitive for the way I like to write code. For the past five years, I've been mainly writing R (tidyverse) and SQL code. I'm sure that has influenced the way I approach DAX.

You be the judge, obviously, but I think the biggest difference between the two is that the VAR/RETURN syntax is more verbose. You have to explicitly tell what you want to happen. I prefer it to the more blackbox-y approach of using CALCULATE. I've also been told that CALCULATE originated before variables did. So back in the day, it was probably the only way. Not anymore, though.

• Most of the translated code is in the Sales table
  • Except for Example 35 where the code will be found in the Product table
• The measures with the VAR/RETURN syntax have been named with the NO CALCULATE postfix

I would like to thank Brian Julius and Greg Deckler for introducing me to this alternative approach to DAX.

If you're interested, I suggest watching the videos on Greg's YouTube channel called DAX for Humans. Very helpful and easy to follow!

Also, there are now alternative code examples using the NO CALCULATE approach from Henk-Jan van Well. To keep things tidy, those files are in the henk_jans_versions/ subfolder. But you should check them out! I've learned a bunch from their approach.