
These references apply to the development of Power Pivot data models in Excel, SSAS Tabular data models, and Power BI data models
From Alberto Ferrari, one of the world’s subject matter experts on the topic of DAX, “7 Reasons DAX is Not Easy“. He says, “DAX is simple, but it is not easy.”
See also my Power BI homepage on this site
- ALM Toolkit
- ALM Toolkit in an Hour video series by Alex Powers (It’s Not About the Cell)
- Analyze in Excel for Power BI Desktop
- BISM Normalizer
- DAX.do (from the team at SQLBI, “Write your DAX queries, try them and share them easily with DAX.do”)
- DAX Editor
- DAX Studio
- DAX Formatter
- DAX Date Template
- Power Pivot Utilities
- SSAS Events Analyzer
- SSAS Tabular Translator
- Tabular Editor (and here’s a link to the actual GitHub page which provides a “portable” version download, too!)
- Documentation
- Links to a four part video series by the tool developer, Daniel Otykier
- Intro to Tabular Editor
- Scripts in Tabular Editor
- Best Practice Analyzer in Tabular Editor
- DevOps with Tabular Editor
- Check out the section on Advanced Scripting and the Useful Script Snippets
- You may also want to check out this little lesson on Advanced Scripting from GitHub also
- Links to a four part video series by the tool developer, Daniel Otykier
- Best Practices Analyzer (BPA) – Best Practice Rules for Tabular Editor on GitHub (location of the master .JSON file with BPA rules)
- Best practice rules to improve your model’s performance (Power BI blog post by Michael Kovalsky)
- Tabular Editor in an Hour (short video segments, also by Alex Powers) [I watched all of it]
- Tabular Object Model (Microsoft documentation reference)
- From Power BI DevCamp, Programing Datasets using the Tabular Object Model {Microsoft Teams recording presented by Phil Seamark}
- You may find some of the “Camp Sessions” useful, too
- Documentation
- VertiPaq Analyzer
- External Tools: Document your Power BI Model by Marc Lelijveld (a free “External Tool” in Power BI)
- Document, Review and Improve Power BI Reports by Vizioneer (commercial tool)
- Power BI Version Control by PowerBI.Tips (currently beta version)

Power BI Helper, now version 12, from RADACAD (I pulled the picture below directly from the RADACAD website.
![]() Intro to Data Modeling for Power BI | ![]() Introducing DAX |
![]() DAX Tools Video Course | |
Beginning DAX Concepts with Power BI (2:54:14) | by Mitchell Pearson at Pragmatic Works |
Advanced DAX | by Mitchell Pearson at Pragmatic Works |
Evaluation Contexts in DAX | by Matt Allington of Excelerator BI in Australia |
DAX Measures: Filter Context Explained in Simple Terms using the I.C.A.N. Principle | by Avi Singh [Part 1] |
Filter Context – (1.9) Ultimate Beginners Guide to DAX | by Sam McKay at Enterprise DNA in Australia |
Elements of DAX (multi-part series) | with Brian Grant of CSG Pro |
![]() Supercharge Power BI – Power BI is Better When You Learn to Write DAX by Matt Allington Click here to buy. | ![]() Collect, Combine, and Transform Data Using Power Query in Excel and Power BI by Gil Raviv | ![]() Exam Ref 70-778, Analyzing and Visualizing Data with Microsoft Power BI by Daniil Maslyuk | ![]() Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Analysis Services – The BISM Tabular Model by Marco Russo, Alberto Ferrari, and Chris Webb |
![]() The Definitive Guide to DAX – Second Edition by Marco Russo and Alberto Ferrari | FREE!![]() Introducing Microsoft Power BI by Alberto Ferrari and Marco Russo | FREE!![]() Power BI from Rookie to Rock Star by Reza Rad |
DAX Patterns from SQLBI
- A few select references from SQLBI…
- 7 Reasons DAX is Not Easy (“DAX is simple, but it is not easy.”)
- Row Context and Filter Context in DAX
- Understanding Context Transition
- Apply DAX basics in Power BI Desktop from the Power BI documentation, several important subtopics
- Stairway to DAX and Power BI (15 part series, at last count) by Bill Pearson at SQLServerCentral
- Stairway to SSAS Tabular by Thomas LeBlanc at SQLServerCentral
- Free sample chapter, “Understanding Evaluation Contexts in DAX” from “The Definitive Guide to DAX: Business intelligence with Microsoft Excel, SQL Server Analysis Services, and Power BI” By Alberto Ferrari and Marco Russo
- DAX Best Practices Guide by MAQ Software (they have other valuable best practice guides, too)
- DAX Date Calculations Cheat Sheet by Arthur Graus at I Love Power BI
- Multiple Data Tables in Power Pivot by Matt Allington at ExceleratorBI {introduces The Collie Layout Method}
- Giving Back: Steal this Reference Card! by Rob Collie at PowerPivotPro (P3)

- DAX – The Diabolical Genius of “SWITCH TRUE” by Rob Collie at P3
- Beginning DAX Concepts with Power BI by Mitchell Pearson of Pragmatic Works {not really beginning. Very good. Almost three hours]