Last Updated: Feb 3, 2025
Easy

DAX Interview Questions

Author Ayush Mishra
3 upvotes
Table of contents
Career growth poll
Do you think IIT Guwahati certified course can help you in your career?

Introduction

Do you want to pursue your career in Data Science related fields and attend the interviews for the Data Science Engineer position at big MNCs and startups? You'll learn a lot from this blog about answering Dax interview questions. 

This blog will cover the most significant and likely Dax interview questions. Let’s start going!

Dax Interview Questions

Most Asked DAX Interview Questions

This section will discuss the fundamentals of Dax interview questions to establish a solid base.

1. What is Dax?

Ans: Analysis Services, Power BI, and Power Pivot use the Excel formula expression language known as Data Analysis Expressions (DAX). Using the data in your model. expression, DAX makes it possible to generate new information.

2. What are DAX functions most frequently used?

Ans: Some important Power BI DAX functions are listed below:

  • FILTER function: An expression or table's subset is returned by the FILTER function.
FILTER(<table>,<filter>)

 

  • ALL Function: It can retrieve all values in a column or rows in a given table, overriding any previous filters.
ALL(<table> or <column>)

 

  • RELATED Function: This DAX function's goal is to enable you to retrieve pertinent data from tables other than the one you're currently working in.
RELATED(<column>)

 

  • CALCULATE Function: This Function makes simple calculations of multiple variables easy. The context in which the DAX CALCULATE function evaluates an expression has been modified by filters.
CALCULATE(<expression>,<filter1>,<filter2>)

 

3. What Exactly Does Dax(ssas) New Calendarauto() Function Mean?

Ans: The output of the CALENDARAUTO function is a table with a single column called "Date" and a contiguous set of dates in it. Based on information in the model, the range of dates is automatically determined.

4. What does Filter context in DAX mean?

Ans: The term "Filter Context" refers to using DAX calculations to apply filters to a set of values in columns or tables. Both implicit and explicit filter contexts exist.

5. What do you mean by Row Context? 

Ans: Current rows are related to row context. The values of all the columns from the current row are included in the row context if you create a calculation using the calculated column. If there is a relationship between that table and the other table, then every related value from the other table is included for that row.

6. What is Query Context?

Ans: The final DAX query is created by combining rows and filters. This fits the definition of query context. The query context is created by DAX implicitly from the filter and row contexts that users explicitly mention for DAX.

You can also read about Introduction to JQuery here.

7. Are there particular data types for DAX?

Ans: Yes, DAX does support a few different data types. The seven types are whole numbers, decimal numbers, boolean, text, date, currency, and N/A.

8. What Is A Pattern?

Ans: A pattern is a universally applicable fix for a frequent issue. In Microsoft Excel, patterns are frequently used to create tables, charts, reports, dashboards, and other things.

9. How Do Dax Patterns Work?

Ans: Power Pivot's programming language, DAX, contains a collection of ready-to-use data models and formulas called DAX Patterns. Use a DAX pattern to create your Excel data model more quickly.

10. Which DAX functions don't produce a table as a result?

Ans: The datetime data type is a DAX data type that the date and time function in the DAX return.

11. How do Max And Maxa Functions In Dax Differ From One Another?

Ans: An argument to the MAX function is a column of numerical values. MAX returns a blank if the column is empty of any numbers. The MAXA function can evaluate values that do not include a number.

12. How do DAX Statements work?

Ans: Users can create calculated fields and measures in Power BI with DAX Statements. All users must be familiar with SQL syntax before we can create DAX statements. 

13. How do DAX Queries work?

Ans: Data in a Range or Tables can be analyzed using DAX queries, which also aid in returning a result set for multiple dimensions, columns, measures, or rows.

14. What is Dax studio in Power BI?

Ans: Data calculations are made easier with the aid of DAX Studio. Dax functions can be used in spreadsheet programs like Open Office, Excel, and Google Docs and are faster than M Formula. Power BI may also support DAX functions.

15. How do DAX Formulas work?

Ans: A component of the Power BI Analytics Tool is DAX Formulas. It is written in DAX, a domain-specific language that supports all of SQL's extensions and is specifically made for querying all of the tabular data in Power BI and other tools. This allows us to go beyond the basics of SQL. 

16. Do DAX functions take the case into account?

Ans: The answer is that DAX is a case-insensitive formula language. We can choose between case-sensitive and case-insensitive collation styles when using SQL Server Analysis Services.

17. Describe Related() and Relatedtable() in detail.

Ans: When you have a row context on the table for each relationship side, RELATED works. If the row context is active on one side of a relationship, RELATEDTABLE will function.

18. Which are the three places where an Expression can be evaluated and hence a specific context is set?

Ans: The places where an expression can be evaluated are:-

  • In a cell of a pivot table. Slicers, filters, rows, and columns determine the filter context.
     
  • Row context is established in a row cell (calculated column) by the row itself.
     
  • In a table's area for measuring calculations. There is no context for a row or a filter.

19. What does the Power BI Gateway mean to you?

Ans: Power BI Gateway is software that allows cloud users to access data stored in an on-premises network. Gateways serve as the on-premises data source's gatekeeper. The gateway is used whenever someone needs to access on-premises data from a cloud or web-based app. 

You can also check this out: System Design Interview Questions

20. What are some important details regarding DAX use in Power BI?

Ans: Some important information regarding DAX are:-

  • DAX expressions are evaluated in an inward to outward direction. It starts from the inner Function to the outermost one at the very last. We should formulate our DAX expressions so that the system reads them properly.
     
  • A functional language is DAX which implies that a function is always its entire source code.

21. How do you know whether we should use M or DAX in which situation?

Ans: Based on their applications, both languages are valued.

For example, it is best to use M in Power Query Editor when creating flag column values depending on the values of other columns. We are changing the data in this instance. 

22. What is Power BI Designer? 

Ans: A standalone companion application to Power BI is called Power BI Designer. It is a single application that combines Power Query, Power Pivot, and Power View. 

23. What are query parameters? 

Ans: The parameters used as or within queries in the Power BI query editor are known as query parameters. In Power BI Desktop, we can add new parameters that we can use in queries, data models, and reports. A specific set of data values from the entire dataset are contained in query parameters.

Also, see oop interview questions

24. How does Dax compare to SQL?

Ans: DAX is a more straightforward language created specifically for data analysis. Database management is one of many tasks that can be performed using the more complex language SQL.

25. What are keepfilters in Dax?

Ans: When launching a new query, you can use the DAX function KeepFilters to retain the filters from the previous query. You can quickly filter data between various queries thanks to this.

Conclusion

In this blog, you learn about the top Dax Interview questions. All the important questions related to Dax were covered in detail.

Please also see the following articles on interview questions: