Marco Russo and Alberto Ferrari fit the square pegs into the square holes:
Visual calculations, introduced as a preview feature with the February 2024 release of Power BI, aim to simplify the creation of calculations tied to a specific visual. Using visual calculations for simple calculations is straightforward.
However, as soon as developers create more complex calculations, they should understand the technical details of visual calculation implementation. This requires understanding the hierarchical structure of the virtual table, the new visual context, the semantics of ROWS and COLUMNS, the behavior of CALCULATE, and the new visual context modifiers EXPAND and COLLAPSE.
In this first article about visual calculations, we introduce VISUAL SHAPE and the basics of visual calculation implementation, leaving the remaining topics to future articles. A complete whitepaper with a detailed explanation of all these topics will be available soon to SQLBI+ subscribers.
Even without a complete whitepaper, this serves as a useful primer on the topic.