I’ve got this theory.  It’s based on incomplete understanding, so… I strove forth to complete the understanding and totally failed. It’s basically that…          =CALCULATE([Calc], MyTable[Col1] = 5, MyTable[Col2] > 10) should be faster than          =CALCULATE([Calc], FILTER(MyTable, MyTable[Col1] = 5 && MyTable[Col2] > 10)) Let us take this journey of failure together, and see what we can learn Continue Reading

Edit: Not sure if my timing could have been more amusing with this entry... but the day after I wrote this Microsoft really pulled out all the stops! http://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2015/01/27/microsoft-brings-business-intelligence-mainstream-enhancements-power-bi/?linkId=11984318 Well, quite a lot.  Those crazy kids… …Launched a new BI Designer …Launched a new BI Dashboard …Released a freaky REST API …bought a company! This while they march along with releases of Power Query, Power Map, Continue Reading

The folks over at PowerPivotPro have blogged like… everything under the sun about Power Pivot.   It’s always a bit embarrassing to search for a technique like… the formula for a calculated column for “End of Week” date… and it turns out that *I* wrote it on PPP blog and forgot about it .  Anyway, I was starting this article and decided to do something crazy and search for it first… and naturally, they already have it blogged. Their technique is super fancy.  This is so simple Continue Reading

Happy 2015 Power Pivot Freaks!  Should be an exciting year as Microsoft seems intent on pushing forward with its self-service BI strategies and the Power BI stack.  I suspect we will see a new version of Office this year, so I will be excited to see which of my dreams come true. Today I wanted to talk a bit about the CONTAINS() function.  The msdn reference gives one example, but it’s a bit rough to come up with scenarios where it’s really applicable.  I saw a great example from Chris Webb Continue Reading