At this point in the course, you have learned the basics of the DAX language. You know how to create calculated columns and measures, and you have a good understanding of common functions used in DAX. With the knowledge you have gained so far, you can already create many interesting reports, but you will need to learn evaluation contexts in order to create reports that are more complex. You will see that an evaluation context is made by filter context and row context. Evaluation contexts are the basis of all of the advanced features of DAX.

You will see how to manage context errors and how to manipulate evaluation contexts, introducing the EARLIER function and how to avoid the use of EARLIER thanks to the variables.

Just few words of warning: the concept of evaluation context is an easy one, and you will learn and understand it soon. Nevertheless, you need to thoroughly understand several subtle considerations and details. Otherwise, you will feel lost at a certain point during your DAX learning path.

Evaluation contexts play an important role with the usage of the function CALCULATE, which you will learn in the next module.

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