Power BI Blog: DAX Query View

Welcome
back to this week’s edition of the Power BI blog series.  This week, we look at the new DAX Query view in Power BI.

The ‘DAX Query view’ is a fourth
view in Power BI Desktop which allows you utilise the powerful DAX query
language using EVALUATE to discover, analyse and see the data in your
semantic model.  Similar to the Explore feature in Power BI
Service, model authors may quickly validate data and measures in their
semantic model without having to build a visual, publish or use an additional
tool.  Changes made to measures may be
updated back to the semantic model.  DAXqueries are different from DAX expressions used to create model items
such as measures, calculated columns and calculated tables, and are more like
SQL queries returning data in a table.

This powerful way to interact with your
data model is now available in the new ‘DAX query view’:

• Quick queries can
  generate DAX queries for you in the Data pane context menu of tables,
  columns or measures, giving you a head start by generating a DAX query
  to preview data or show summary statistics.  You may use DAX queries to help you
  understand the data without creating visuals and for DirectQuery you no longer
  must go back to Power Query to see some sample data
• Quick queries may
  be used to obtain the DAX expression of all, some or a specific measure
  in a generated DAX query.  It provides
  the DEFINE block with the measure’s DAX expression and an EVALUATE block to see the measure’s output.  You may
  then add to the DAX query with any additional group by columns
• ‘Update the model
  options’ will be available to you with any DAX query updates to measures
  in DAX query’s DEFINE block
• measures that
  reference other measures can now be seen on the same screen and updated
  together.  You may preview the output of
  your changes and then also update the model when ready
• Report view’s ‘Performance
  Analyzer’ already lets you copy the visual DAX query.  Now, you no longer need to take that DAX query and use another tool to view and run it: simply run it in ‘DAX query view’ instead
• all these features are
  now in a bigger DAX query editor similar to VS Code, including more
  keyboard shortcuts and the ability to improve readability by formatting any DAX query.

Microsoft plans to continue to add
functionality to the ‘DAX query view’: they have previously shown a visual
demonstration with a ‘DAX query view Copilot’, which will be coming
soon. You may get started today by turning on this public Preview feature in Options
-> Preview features.  

We will look at the functionality available in the ‘DAX query view’ in more depth next week.

In the
meantime, please remember we offer training in Power BI which you can find out
more about here.  If you wish to catch up on past articles, you
can find all of our past Power BI blogs here.