Nested Variables In DAX

Reposted from Chris Webb's blog with the author's permission.

Last week, at the SQL Server Days conference in Belgium, Kasper mentioned in his presentation that it was possible to define variables inside variables in DAX. So, for example, you could define a measure like so:

MyMeasure = 
var Outer1 = 
               var Inner1 = 1
               var Inner2 = 2
               return Inner1 + Inner2
var Outer2 = 3
return Outer1 + Outer2

This measure returns 6 as you might expect:

There aren’t any performance benefits to doing this, although of course it helps with code readability and organisation (thanks to Marius for confirming this).

With my newly rekindled love of DAX I thought this was quite interesting. I’m not really sure why though, given that it’s not particularly useful; I think Matt might be right:

Chris has been working with Microsoft BI tools since he started using beta 3 of OLAP Services back in the late 90s. Since then he has worked with Analysis Services in a number of roles (including three years spent with Microsoft Consulting Services) and he is now an independent consultant specialising in complex MDX, Analysis Services cube design and Analysis Services query performance problems. His company website can be found at http://www.crossjoin.co.uk and his blog can be found at http://cwebbbi.wordpress.com/ .