LASTDATE vs. MAX? CALCULATETABLE vs. FILTER? It depends! #dax #powerpivot #tabular

A few days ago I published the article FILTER vs CALCULATETABLE: optimization using cardinality estimation, where I try to explain why the sentence "CALCULATETABLE is better than FILTER" is not always true. In reality, CALCULATETABLE internally might use FILTER for every logical expression you use as a filter argument. What really matters is the cardinality of the table iterated by the FILTER, regardless of the fact it's an explicit statement or an implicit one generated automatically by CALCULATETABLE. In addition to the article, there is a digression related to the use of time intelligence functions, which returns a table and not a scalar values. These functions (such as DATESBETWEEN and LASTDATE) might seem better than FILTER, but this is not necessarily true.