August 2019
Intermediate to advanced
768 pages
26h
English
book
Definitive Guide to DAX, The: Business intelligence for Microsoft Power BI, SQL Server Analysis Services, and Excel, 2nd Edition
by Alberto Ferrari, Marco Russo
Content preview from Definitive Guide to DAX, The: Business intelligence for Microsoft Power BI, SQL Server Analysis Services, and Excel, 2nd Edition
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Chapter 11Handling hierarchies
Hierarchies are oftentimes present in data models to make it easier for the user to slice and dice using predefined exploration paths. Nevertheless, DAX does not have any built-in function providing a calculation over hierarchies. Computing a simple calculation like the ratio to parent requires complex DAX code, and the support for calculations over hierarchies proves to be a challenge in general.
However, it is worth learning the DAX code required to handle hierarchies because calculations over hierarchies are very common. In this chapter, we show how to create basic calculations over hierarchies and how to use DAX to transform a parent/child hierarchy into a regular hierarchy.