Surely Allowing Calculations/Measures in Data model only is a Bad Thing?

[Anonymous]

Hi there

I am pretty new to Power BI, but from what I can see, all calculations need to be done in the data model itself.

Most other BI tools I have worked in, allow you to do calculations in the report.

In my PB dashboard, I need to calculate things like Sales current year, sales prior year, running total sales, and then exactly the same thing for cost of sales, qty etc. The result of this is that the model gets really bloated. 

Am I missing something or is this not a major weakness of Power BI?

Regards

Chris

[Anonymous]

Hi @Anonymous -

I think it's a good thing to have a central store of measures, because they are reusable.

Regarding bloating, measures are evaluated at run-time - the information isn't stored in the data model.

Cheers!

Nathan

[Anonymous]

Hi Nathan

Thanks for the feedback. 

The issue I have with this is that if users want to create their own report, their might be a fairly simple measure that the need to create that is not available at the time. If they don't have access to the dataset, they cannot quickly add it. Having a central repository of measure is definitely a good thing, but most BI tools also allow users to create additional calculations if required when authoring reports.

Regards

Chris

[Anonymous]

@ChrisH - I hadn't realized that Power BI does have the capability that you're looking for. Here is the link. Thanks for helping me learn!

Cheers!

Nathan