Measure

In the Ultra Transcenders books

DP-900DP-600PL-300

Each book explains Measure in context, with comparison tables and the common traps.

Terms in this definition

• LIKE

  Compares strings with a pattern that can contain the % and _ wildcards. Because it only understands character patterns, searching big volumes of text this way is much slower than using full-text search.

• Fact table

  Stores the numbers captured when business events happen, like what each sale brought in; an analytical model rolls these up into measures and slices them by dimensions.

• Semantic model

  Sometimes called an OLAP model, this Power BI and Fabric layer defines the measures, hierarchies, tables and relationships that reports and dashboards query; star schema design is the usual pattern.

Related terms

• Accuracy (classification metric)

  Overall measure for a classification model: the share of all test cases it predicts correctly.

• Automatic page refresh

  A page-level option that makes visuals re-query a DirectQuery source on a timer or whenever a change detection measure's value moves. It isn't available for Import models, and in the service the capacity sets the shortest interval allowed.

• Bi-directional relationship

  Here filters travel from either table to the other. That helps with many-to-many bridges, but because it can hurt performance and produce ambiguous paths, Microsoft Learn suggests turning it on only when needed or using CROSSFILTER in a measure. Row-level security still filters one way unless the setting to apply security filters both ways is chosen.

• Calculated column

  A new column whose DAX formula is worked out for each row when the data refreshes, with the results kept in the model and so increasing its size. Because the values are stored, it can be used in slicers, filters, rows and axes, which a measure cannot.

• Calculation group

  Lets you write common DAX logic like prior year or year-to-date once, as calculation items, and apply it to any explicit measure via SELECTEDMEASURE, so you need far fewer near-duplicate measures. Adding one to a semantic model discourages implicit measures.

• Change detection

  With this kind of automatic page refresh, Power BI polls a single measure on a schedule and redraws the page only if the measure's result has changed. Only one such measure is allowed per model, and in the service it requires Fabric, Premium or PPU capacity; shared capacity cannot use it.

• Compliance Manager

  Helps an organisation measure itself against regulations and standards: ready-made assessments test its controls, suggested improvement actions show what to fix, and a compliance score records progress. Part of Microsoft Purview.

• context transition

  What CALCULATE does to row context: it converts it into an equivalent filter context. You need it for aggregating expressions inside iterators or calculated columns, and referring to a model measure triggers it implicitly.