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Appendix B. DAX Reference

The Data Analysis Expressions (DAX) language is a library of functions and operators that can be combined to build formulas and expressions. This section provides topics that describe function syntax and other attributes of the DAX scenarios. The DAX reference content in this appendix is obtained from Microsoft documentation. In this appendix you will learn about the following:

• DAX Syntax Specification

• Operator Reference

• Function Reference

DAX SYNTAX SPECIFICATION

Data Analysis Expressions (DAX) is a library of functions, operators, and constants that can be combined to build formulas and expressions in PowerPivot Client. This section provides details about the syntax and requirements of the DAX language. This section contains the following sections:

• Syntax Requirements

• Naming Requirements

• Functions

• Operators and Constants

• Data Types

Syntax Requirements

DAX formulas are very similar to the formulas you type in Excel tables, but there are some key differences.

• In Microsoft Excel you can reference individual cells or arrays; in PowerPivot you can reference only complete tables or columns of data. However, if you need to work with only part of a column, or with unique values from a column, you can achieve similar behavior by using DAX functions that filter the column or return unique values.

• DAX formulas do not support exactly the same data types as Microsoft Excel. In general, DAX provides more data types than Excel does, and DAX performs implicit type conversions on some ...