DAX beginner question. Switch or IF

[uBoatCaptain]

Hello. Pardon the ignorance embedded in this question, but I am trying to put together a proof of concept report and I have a measure that is critical. I believe DAX can compute this but as yet I lack the depth to troubleshoot the logic and/or syntax issues I am having with this measure.

I have a fact table (CFNDFact) that has columns for chart of account fields and a single value row called "data". I need a measure that, based on the value of the "ACCOUNT" field (of which there are only four), will return either 0, the value of [data], or the negative of [data]. I want this measure computed for each row and the summary groupings to be handled by the visualizations.

I am sure it is just my ignorance of some basic DAX that is making this much harder than it is. I hope one of you experienced people can spare a couple minutes to point out what I don't get yet. Thanks for your help.

A couple things I have tried are:

County Funding = SWITCH([Account],
"INTREV",0,
"NONOPREV",0,
"OPREV",-[data],
"TOTEXP",[data],0)

County Funding =
IF ([ACCOUNT]="INTREV",0,
IF ([ACCOUNT]="NONOPREV",0,
IF ([ACCOUNT]="TOTEXP",[data],
IF ([ACCOUNT]="OPREV",-[data],))))

[achinm45]

Hi @uBoatCaptain,

Can you post sample data on which you are trying to apply the formulas ?

Thanks

Achin

[uBoatCaptain]

Here is an example of the data. This is the fact table, and every column except 'data' has a related dimension table.

column	fund	dept_id	ACCOUNT	program	req_item	data
ADOPTED	230	1015000100	TOTEXP	0	0	1053817
ADOPTED	230	1015000100	TOTEXP	0	101500_01	20000
ADOPTED	230	1015000100	TOTEXP	0	101500_02	0
ADOPTED	230	1015000100	TOTEXP	0	101500_03	5000
ADOPTED	230	1015000100	TOTEXP	0	101500_05	5000

I attempted to see if I could create this as a column and it worked. I simplified the formula in the process to County Funding = SWITCH(CFNDFact[ACCOUNT],"TOTEXP",[data],"OPREV", -[data],0).

Trying to use this same formula (with a different measure name) for a measure gets the error

'A single value for column 'data' in table 'CFNDFact' cannot be determined. This can happen when a measure formula refers to a column that contains many values without specifying an aggregation such as min, max, count, or sum to get a single result.'

[Greg_Deckler]

@uBoatCaptain - Glad you got it working. Yep, that was what I figured was going on and the exact error that I would have expected you to get with that formula used in a measure. Basically, a measure has to use an aggregation function because its context is dynamic within a report depending upon filters, slicers and the visualizations themselves that they are used within. Therefore, you can't single out any particular thing with a measure, measures always assume that they are dealing with a "set" of things. Always think of measures as if you have to feed it a "table" of things (multiple rows). Calculated columns on the other hand are constrained to their row context (more or less) and so you can grab individual values in that row or a related row in another table.

[Greg_Deckler]

Sounds like this should be a column really rather than a measure potentially. And I'm not sure of the logic for summary groupings honestly. What is the problem you are running into? Syntax error or something else?