PowerBI.tips

Discussing SQLBI's 7 Reasons DAX is Not Easy

December 15, 2021 By Seth Bauer
Discussing SQLBI's 7 Reasons DAX is Not Easy

First of all, go read this amazing blog put out by Alberto Ferrari over at SQLBI that he posted awhile ago. It is the context for the conversation we had and is well worth the read. 7 Reason DAX is Not Easy If you are new to DAX you will find a wealth of deep, insightful and helpful content in anything you find on SQLBI. Marco and Alberto are amazing guru’s in DAX and tabular models and have been perfecting their craft and helping the wider community hone their skills for many years.

I’m not going to re-hash the article as you should go read it yourself on their site. The points we talk about in depth in the podcast relate to focusing on the best methods to approaching and learning DAX. We take our experiences and the methods we learned and discuss at length the different points made in the article. Explore with us how you get better and overall simplify your process when building or troubleshooting DAX.

Key Takeaways

Tommy

Practice with Intent

Understand each part of the calculation

Reverse engineer Calculations

Seth

Start Simple

Break down the problem to simple forms

Use variables and tables to build measures

Mike

Use Community Tools –

Power BI Side Tools (Download with Business Ops)

DAX Generator

Previous

Data Culture with Matthew Roche

More Posts

Jun 10, 2026

Microsoft Build Recap – Ep.535

Mike and Tommy recap Microsoft Build 2026 through a Power BI and Fabric lens, focusing on the announcements that matter most for report builders, semantic models, and agent-driven app development. They unpack why Rayfin, Replit integration, OneLake, and new Fabric skills signal a shift from asking AI for answers toward using agents to create real production artifacts.

Jun 5, 2026

CI/CD Automation with Agents – Ep.534

Mike and Tommy explore how agents can simplify CI/CD in Fabric by helping teams work through Git workflows, merge conflicts, validation, and deployment automation. They also compare deployment pipelines with Git-based approaches and explain why small, testable automations are the safest way to start.

Jun 3, 2026

Claude Design & Power BI Embedded – Ep.533

Mike and Tommy explore how Claude Design, agentic workflows, and HTML wireframes could reshape report prototyping for Power BI teams. They also debate where today’s tooling still falls short, especially for Power BI Desktop users who need practical ways to turn context, design ideas, and embedded experiences into working reports.