Let's say you had a table.
OrderNumber, OrderDate, City, & Sales
The Sales field is given to you. No need to calculate it.
When you bring in this data into Power BI, say you want to analyze Sales by City (in a table format).
You can just straight away drag the two fields into the table.
No need to create a measure.
So now, suppose you created a measure, though.
Total Sales = Sum(Sales).
Is there any advantage to it, in this scenario?
Is it more efficient to use: City, Total Sales
than it is to use: City, Sales
Both display the same information.
I was told that it is good to always create explicit measures, and that measures are more efficient. Weather right or wrong, I don't know, but from perspective of policy, it is a good idea, since measures do protect you from column name changes. In general, I think I can just make a rule of thumb to always define any measures that you want to report on explicitly.... BUT the answer above could also be correct... stack exchange doesn't let you choose multiple answers....