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Using the RELATED function to link tables, and how to test for blanks in DAX Part two of a two-part series of blogs
You can make pivot tables much easier to use by combining all of the aggregator columns into a single table, using the RELATED function. This blog also shows you how to work with blanks, including using the ISBLANK function to test whether matching values exist in linked tables. Using the RELATED function to pull values from other tables Using the BLANK Function in SSAS Tabular Models (this blog) This blog is part of our online SSAS Tabular tutorial; we also offer lots of other Analysis Services training resources.

Using the RELATED function to link tables, and how to test for blanks in DAX

Part two of a two-part series of blogs

You can make pivot tables much easier to use by combining all of the aggregator columns into a single table, using the RELATED function. This blog also shows you how to work with blanks, including using the ISBLANK function to test whether matching values exist in linked tables.

Using the RELATED function to pull values from other tables
Using the BLANK Function in SSAS Tabular Models (this blog)

This blog is part of our online SSAS Tabular tutorial; we also offer lots of other Analysis Services training resources.

Posted by Andy Brown on 05 January 2016

Using the BLANK Function in SSAS Tabular Models

Blanks are similar to nulls in SQL Server or Access, but have a number of important differences. This blog page shows these differences, and shows how to use the ISBLANK function.

Our worked example

If you want to follow along with this example, download this Excel workbook and import the two worksheets into a new model to get:

You'll need to create the relationship shown too.

Add a measure to the animals table to count them:

Create a measure to count the number of animals.

You can now create the following pivot table:


The pivot table fields	The pivot table itself

The problem is that there is no description for animals with no legs (basically, snakes), because we didn't import one in the Leggedness table:

There is no description for zero-legged animals (possibly because I can't imagine what it would be!).

A solution - combine RELATED and BLANK

What we can do is to ask the following question: if you try to look up the Description field in the Leggedness table, does this return a blank because there isn't a description to return?

To put this into practice, start with creating a calculated column to look up the Description field in the Animal table:

This column looks up for each animal's number of legs what the corresponding description would be. Snakes - as ever - are the problem.

You can now wrap this formula in an ISBLANK function:

Here we're testing to see whether the value returned for a given number of legs is blank (ie we weren't able to find a matching record).

You could then complete this formula to get:

=IF(

ISBLANK(RELATED(Leggedness[Description])),

"No legs",

RELATED(Leggedness[Description])

)

This gives the following:

The headings in the pivot table will now be correct.

The pivot table now can read:

The leg description looks much better.

Testing for BLANK()

Instead of using the ISBLANK function, it might have been neater to derive the final result in two stages:

This solution creates a column called Interim, then a column called Final.

Here are the formula for the two columns:

Column	Formula
Interim	=RELATED(Leggedness[Description])
Final	=IF([Interim]=BLANK(),"No legs",[Interim])

You can use ISBLANK and =BLANK() interchangeably.

Blank arithmetic

Blanks do not work for arithmetic in the same way as nulls in Access or SQL Server:

Operation	Example	How BLANK() is treated	Result
Addition, subtraction	BLANK() + 5	As zero	5
Multiplication, division	BLANK() * 3	Cascades through	BLANK()
Combinations	BLANK() && False	Ignored	False

Combining conditions

Note the symbols to show whether either or both of two conditions are true:

Symbol	What it means
&&	Two things are both true
\|\|	Either or both of two things is true

And that's the end of this blog!

Parts of this blog
Using the RELATED function to pull values from other tables Using the BLANK Function in SSAS Tabular Models (this blog)

Some other pages relevant to the above blogs include:

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