Comes after the VAR definitions in DAX and holds the expression whose value the formula gives back. While debugging, pointing it at one variable for a while is a useful trick.
Read more: Microsoft Learn
In the Ultra Transcenders books
Each book explains RETURN in context, with comparison tables and the common traps.
Terms in this definition
- VAR
Names an expression's result, scalar or table, so a later RETURN can use it. Variables make measures quicker, clearer and simpler to debug, and remove any need for EARLIER or EARLIEST.
- DAX
Short for Data Analysis Expressions, the formula language you write measures, calculated columns and row-level security rules in, within tabular semantic models in Power BI, Excel Power Pivot or Analysis Services.
Related terms
- Azure Reservations
Discounts on Azure resources such as dedicated hosts or SQL vCores in return for committing to a one- or three-year term.
- Azure savings plan for compute
An agreement to spend a set hourly amount on qualifying compute, such as VMs, App Service, Functions Premium and Container Instances, in any region for one or three years in return for reduced prices. Anything used beyond that amount is billed at pay-as-you-go rates.
- EXTRACT
Lets a user copy encrypted content. Copilot and agents only return protected content to someone holding EXTRACT together with VIEW, and Full control (OWNER) already grants it.
- GPT-4.1
OpenAI chat models gpt-4.1, gpt-4.1-mini and gpt-4.1-nano, which accept images and text and return text. They are deprecated in Azure: nano retires on 14 October 2026, while the full and mini models follow on 14 April 2027.
- GROUPING SETS
Lets one
GROUP BYquery return results for several different groupings at once, giving the same output as stitching individual aggregations together withUNION ALL.CUBEandROLLUPare convenient shorthands built on it. - Health probe
A TCP, HTTP or HTTPS check a load balancer uses to decide whether backends are healthy. For an HTTP probe, its path has to return HTTP 200.
- Index field attributes
Settings applied to each field in an Azure AI Search index:
searchablefor full text,retrievableto return it,filterablefor exact-match$filter,sortable,facetablefor counts, andkeyfor the unique document ID. - Indirect spoke
VNet that hangs off an NVA's VNet through peering instead of attaching to the virtual hub. Reaching it takes a static route on the hub towards the NVA VNet connection, a static route on that connection towards the NVA's IP, and a UDR so replies return through the NVA.