I Think I’m In Switzerland
December 7, 2010Here’s a picture JUST taken out our bedroom window:
So beautiful !! 60+ cms in the last two days with more to come (and then rain on Friday darn it 
)
So we have School Snow Days and extra neighbour kids and dogs and no plumbers (unfortunately).
So I have been hunkered down in my office (such as it is right now) working on DAX and working on Excel Tables and Structured references while trying to keep others at bay.
I have to admit that I am having trouble with DAX after years and years of straight Transactional data with SQL and with Excel formulas. I am finding it a lot easier to leave my data in Excel or in external relational tables and then manipulating the results in Excel Query and Pivot Tables.
The problem is not DAX though … the problem is ME. I have yet to find that magic point where DAX suddenly makes sense… that “Eureka” moment where it all makes sense.
I am able to get a lot of value out of CUBE functions as I have blogged about before but DAX still stays a mystery to me. When I get that breakthrough (and I will) I will bolg it here and everywhere because I believe in DAX and PowerPivot and want to see more people getting the most value from it.
Regards
Dick (disappearing into the snow)
I appreciate your post on this subject. If someone like you who has experience in relational and drill-down thinking is having trouble grasping DAX, just imagine the size of the learning gap for Excel “power users”, which PowerPivot is supposed to be targeting. I am fairly far up the learning curve (still not close to being an expert, though), but not without a very significant time investment.
Thanx for you comment David.
I suppose as a so-called “guru” (but not and MVP remember
) I am not supposed to admit that some technology is beating me, I pride myself on honesty. Also if I didn’t tell the truth here what good would this blog be (as if it has any value anyway).
I really believe that there is a magic “Tipping-Point” in the logic of DAX that we have to find. We should all be trying to find it and if it makes a good little book that’d be an opportunity for someone … anyone?
Without a central theme or logic then DAX simply will not proliferate – and that would suck.
Dick
[...] feel that I’ve really truly wrapped my head around how they work. (I notice that Dick Moffat feels similarly, [...]
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I’ve recently purchased Rob Collie’s book DAX Formulas for PowerPivot…the Excel Pro’s Guide to Mastering DAX.
It’s freakin genius!