Features | DAX Studio

📄️ Features Intro

This section lists of all the features in DAX Studio.

📄️ Bracket Matching

Dax queries can get quite involved and can include deep levels of nested brackets. Dax Studio helps you with this by highlighting matching brackets.

📄️ Capture Diagnostics

Capture Diagnostics is designed as a way to capture diagnostic information about 1 or more queries in a single file. This file can then be used for later analysis.

📄️ Clear Cache

You can use this option to do a one off clear of the Storage Engine cache for the currently connected database

This is a toggle button, when it is enabled it will automatically execute a Clear Cache command before running a query. This is useful in performance tuning situations where you want to tune for the worst case scenario.

📄️ Connection Dialog

The connection dialog in DAX Studio provides the ability to connect to:

📄️ Database Dialog

The database dialog is shown when connecting to a data source which has more than one database / semantic model.

📄️ DaxFormatter.com Support

Dax Studio has built-in support for formatting queries using www.daxformatter.com (so you must have an internet connection in order to format a query)

📄️ Define Measure

When you right-click on a measure in the metadata pane there are a number of options available for defining measures

📄️ DMV List

This tab shows a list of all of the available DMVs. Dragging a DMV over to the query editor gives you a basic "SELECT * FROM ..." query for that DMV.

📄️ Editor Help Text

For people that are new to writing DAX queries it can be tricky to know how to get started with your writing your first query. To make this experience easier we have added some help text that displays when the main edit window is empty. This text will automatically disappear as soon as you start typing or you can turn it off permanently using the tick box at the bottom

📄️ Excel - Linked Results

This output option is only available when DAX Studio is launched from the Excel Addin

📄️ Excel - Static Results

This output option is only available when DAX Studio is launched from the Excel Addin

📄️ Export Data

This feature gives you the ability to export entire tables from your data model to either CSV files or to SQL Server

📄️ File Menu

The DAX Studio File menu gives you access to open .dax and .msdax file. It also contains a list of recently used files and gives you access to the options menu.

📄️ Find/Replace

The editor in Dax Studio supports both Find (Ctrl+F)

📄️ Flexible Layout

Dax Studio incorporates a docking control which allows you to move documents and tool windows around to suit your personal taste.

📄️ Function Metadata

This tab displays a list of all the available DAX functions.

📄️ Indent Based Code Folding

This is a preview feature an needs to be enabled using the setting under Options > Preview

📄️ Code Completion Support

Dax Studio provides full code completion support

📄️ Load Power BI Performance Data

As of May 2019 Power BI Desktop has the ability to run a Performance Analyzer (which can be displayed via the View ribbon)

📄️ MDX Support

In addition to running DAX queries you can also execute MDX queries from DAX Studio.

📄️ Metadata Panes

DAX Studio has 3 different metadata panes. With all the metadata panes you can either double click on an item to insert it into the current position of the editor or you can drag the item and drop it in a selected position in the query pane.

📄️ Model Metadata

Tabular Analysis Services models and PowerPivot models have the ability to be queried from multi-dimensional and tabular clients. This feature displays the metadata in a Tabular format and when you double-click or drag items off the metadata pane onto the query pane you will get the tabular name format.

📄️ Model Metrics

DAX Studio has the ability to analyze your data model and report on the memory usage. This can be extremely helpful when performance tuning as the more memory your data structures require, the slower they are to both process and query.

📄️ Multiple Queries Detected dialog

This dialog is displayed when pasting in text copied from the Power BI Performance Analyzer which contains both the DAX query generated by Power BI plus any additional query generated from a Direct Query connection. If you are connected to the main report data model the secondary query is not as useful as the initial DAX query since it cannot be executed against the main report data model, so this dialog gives you the option to automatically strip out the second query. You can choose an option for a default behaviour or you can choose to be prompted any time such a query is pasted

📄️ Multiple Tabs

Dax Studio supports multiple tabs, the user interface is multi-threaded so you can have a query running in one window while you work on a different query in another window.

📄️ Version notifications

When it starts up Dax Studio will periodically check if an updated release is available. When a newer version is found a notification will be displayed with a link to the download page.

📄️ Output Modes

output modes

📄️ Output Panes

There are 3 different output panes in DAX Studio

📄️ Parameter Support

DAX Studio has a number of features that make working with parameters in DAX queries easier.

📄️ Privacy Settings

The privacy options exist to allow users to turn off some or all of the internet based functionality. This allows people with highly sensitive information in their data models to eliminate the possibility of any of this information being sent outside of their organization.

📄️ Publish Functions

There are two buttons available in the Advanced tab of the Options window. These buttons exist to help support the https://dax.guide website.

📄️ Query Builder

The query builder provides a drag and drop interface for building queries against your data model.

📄️ Query Editor

The query editor pane is where you enter the queries that you want DAX Studio to execute.

📄️ Result Formatting

When the results of a DAX query are returned they come back in a "raw", unformatted format and it is then up to the client tool to apply any formatting. In the case of client tools like Power BI Desktop where the tool is generating the DAX query this is not hard since the tool knows exactly how to map a column in the results to the source column, but with DAX Studio it gets a lot trickier since the user can type in an arbitrary query with any structure they like.