External Article

Cracking DAX – the EARLIER and RANKX Functions

So far in this series, Andy Brown of Wise Owl Training has shed light on functions like CALCULATE, VALUES and FILTER, but it’s only when you understand the idiosyncrasies of the EARLIER function that you can claim to have genuinely cracked DAX. This article gives four examples of the use of this peculiar function, in the process explaining why it has such a misleading name. Using the EARLIER function properly all boils down (as is so often the case with DAX) to understanding row and filter context. The article also shows how to use the RANKX function to sort data into your required order.

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How Long is a Long I/O?

In SQL Server 2025, a long I/O is recorded in the error log with message 833. How long much an I/O request be outstanding before this message is written to the log?

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