Ran Chen, EA, CFP®

Tech Exam Prep

Education EN ↓ 221 episodes

Tech Exam Prep is a free, daily podcast by OpenExamPrep covering the most in-demand IT and technology certification exams — including CompTIA Security+, AWS Cloud Practitioner, CompTIA Network+, CCNA, CompTIA A+, and more. Each 5-minute episode breaks down one exam topic with concrete examples, common exam traps, and memory tricks to help you pass on your first attempt. No fluff, no filler — just the concepts you need to know, explained the way the exam tests them. This podcast is made by Ran Chen, who holds an EA license, Insurance and Securities licenses (Series 6, 63, 65), and the CFP desig...

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Author

Ran Chen, EA, CFP®

Episodes

[PL-300] 36, Themes and Conditional Formatting 05.10.2026 4:08

This podcast is made by Ran Chen, who holds an EA license, Insurance and Securities licenses (Series 6, 63, 65), and the CFP® designation. He is passionate about opening access to high-quality exam preparation resources and helping learners prepare more effectively for professional certification exams. In this episode you will learn: - How report themes establish global design consistency across P...

[PL-300] 35, Formatting and Configuring Visuals 04.10.2026 3:49

This podcast is made by Ran Chen, who holds an EA license, Insurance and Securities licenses (Series 6, 63, 65), and the CFP® designation. He is passionate about opening access to high-quality exam preparation resources and helping learners prepare more effectively for professional certification exams. In this episode you will learn: - How implicit field aggregations differ from explicit DAX measu...

[PL-300] 34, Choosing the Right Power BI Visual 03.10.2026 3:52

This podcast is made by Ran Chen, who holds an EA license, Insurance and Securities licenses (Series 6, 63, 65), and the CFP® designation. He is passionate about opening access to high-quality exam preparation resources and helping learners prepare more effectively for professional certification exams. In this episode you will learn: - How to match core business requirements like trends, correlati...

[PL-300] 33, Optimizing Model and DAX Performance 02.10.2026 3:02

This podcast is made by Ran Chen, who holds an EA license, Insurance and Securities licenses (Series 6, 63, 65), and the CFP® designation. He is passionate about opening access to high-quality exam preparation resources and helping learners prepare more effectively for professional certification exams. In this episode you will learn: - How removing unnecessary rows and columns improves VertiPaq co...

[PL-300] 32, Semi-Additive Measures, Quick Measures, and Calculation Groups 01.10.2026 3:21

This podcast is made by Ran Chen, who holds an EA license, Insurance and Securities licenses (Series 6, 63, 65), and the CFP® designation. He is passionate about opening access to high-quality exam preparation resources and helping learners prepare more effectively for professional certification exams. In this episode you will learn: - How semi-additive measures aggregate across spatial dimensions...

[PL-300] 31, Iterator and Statistical Functions 30.09.2026 3:44

This podcast is made by Ran Chen, who holds an EA license, Insurance and Securities licenses (Series 6, 63, 65), and the CFP® designation. He is passionate about opening access to high-quality exam preparation resources and helping learners prepare more effectively for professional certification exams. In this episode you will learn: - How to differentiate standard column aggregators from row-by-r...

[PL-300] 30, DAX Time Intelligence 29.09.2026 3:55

This podcast is made by Ran Chen, who holds an EA license, Insurance and Securities licenses (Series 6, 63, 65), and the CFP® designation. He is passionate about opening access to high-quality exam preparation resources and helping learners prepare more effectively for professional certification exams. In this episode you will learn: - Essential prerequisites for proper date tables including conti...

[PL-300] 29, FILTER, ALL, VALUES, and Filter Modification 28.09.2026 2:53

This podcast is made by Ran Chen, who holds an EA license, Insurance and Securities licenses (Series 6, 63, 65), and the CFP® designation. He is passionate about opening access to high-quality exam preparation resources and helping learners prepare more effectively for professional certification exams. In this episode you will learn: - How ALL and REMOVEFILTERS clear existing filter context to cal...

[PL-300] 28, CALCULATE and Context Transition 27.09.2026 3:50

This podcast is made by Ran Chen, who holds an EA license, Insurance and Securities licenses (Series 6, 63, 65), and the CFP® designation. He is passionate about opening access to high-quality exam preparation resources and helping learners prepare more effectively for professional certification exams. In this episode you will learn: - How CALCULATE modifies filter context and follows a strict eva...

[PL-300] 27, Building Aggregation Measures 26.09.2026 3:35

This podcast is made by Ran Chen, who holds an EA license, Insurance and Securities licenses (Series 6, 63, 65), and the CFP® designation. He is passionate about opening access to high-quality exam preparation resources and helping learners prepare more effectively for professional certification exams. In this episode you will learn: - How to choose between COUNT, COUNTA, and COUNTROWS for efficie...

[PL-300] 26, DAX Syntax, Row Context, and Filter Context 25.09.2026 3:08

This podcast is made by Ran Chen, who holds an EA license, Insurance and Securities licenses (Series 6, 63, 65), and the CFP® designation. He is passionate about opening access to high-quality exam preparation resources and helping learners prepare more effectively for professional certification exams. In this episode you will learn: - The crucial distinction between scalar values and table result...

[PL-300] 25, Measures vs Calculated Columns and Tables 24.09.2026 4:24

This podcast is made by Ran Chen, who holds an EA license, Insurance and Securities licenses (Series 6, 63, 65), and the CFP® designation. He is passionate about opening access to high-quality exam preparation resources and helping learners prepare more effectively for professional certification exams. In this episode you will learn: - Differences in evaluation time and RAM storage between measure...

[PL-300] 24, Creating a Common Date Table 23.09.2026 3:32

This podcast is made by Ran Chen, who holds an EA license, Insurance and Securities licenses (Series 6, 63, 65), and the CFP® designation. He is passionate about opening access to high-quality exam preparation resources and helping learners prepare more effectively for professional certification exams. In this episode you will learn: - How to generate date tables using DAX functions like CALENDAR...

[PL-300] 23, Cross-Filter Direction and Relationship Paths 22.09.2026 4:10

This podcast is made by Ran Chen, who holds an EA license, Insurance and Securities licenses (Series 6, 63, 65), and the CFP® designation. He is passionate about opening access to high-quality exam preparation resources and helping learners prepare more effectively for professional certification exams. In this episode you will learn: - Default to single cross-filter direction to preserve query per...

[PL-300] 22, Relationship Cardinality 21.09.2026 3:18

This podcast is made by Ran Chen, who holds an EA license, Insurance and Securities licenses (Series 6, 63, 65), and the CFP® designation. He is passionate about opening access to high-quality exam preparation resources and helping learners prepare more effectively for professional certification exams. In this episode you will learn: - How to select one-to-many, one-to-one, and many-to-many cardin...

[PL-300] 21, Role-Playing Dimensions 20.09.2026 3:45

This podcast is made by Ran Chen, who holds an EA license, Insurance and Securities licenses (Series 6, 63, 65), and the CFP® designation. He is passionate about opening access to high-quality exam preparation resources and helping learners prepare more effectively for professional certification exams. In this episode you will learn: - How to identify role-playing dimension scenarios involving Ord...

[PL-300] 20, Table and Column Properties 19.09.2026 3:37

This podcast is made by Ran Chen, who holds an EA license, Insurance and Securities licenses (Series 6, 63, 65), and the CFP® designation. He is passionate about opening access to high-quality exam preparation resources and helping learners prepare more effectively for professional certification exams. In this episode you will learn: - How to configure Sort by Column to resolve chronological sorti...

[PL-300] 19, Star Schema Design and Model Granularity 18.09.2026 3:39

This podcast is made by Ran Chen, who holds an EA license, Insurance and Securities licenses (Series 6, 63, 65), and the CFP® designation. He is passionate about opening access to high-quality exam preparation resources and helping learners prepare more effectively for professional certification exams. In this episode you will learn: - How to distinguish fact tables from dimension tables to establ...

[PL-300] 18, Relationship Keys and Query Load Settings 17.09.2026 3:24

This podcast is made by Ran Chen, who holds an EA license, Insurance and Securities licenses (Series 6, 63, 65), and the CFP® designation. He is passionate about opening access to high-quality exam preparation resources and helping learners prepare more effectively for professional certification exams. In this episode you will learn: - How to handle composite keys by concatenating columns or creat...

[PL-300] 17, Merge Queries vs Append Queries 16.09.2026 4:09

This podcast is made by Ran Chen, who holds an EA license, Insurance and Securities licenses (Series 6, 63, 65), and the CFP® designation. He is passionate about opening access to high-quality exam preparation resources and helping learners prepare more effectively for professional certification exams. In this episode you will learn: - How Merge Queries joins tables horizontally using matching key...

[PL-300] 16, Reference Queries vs Duplicate Queries 15.09.2026 3:20

This podcast is made by Ran Chen, who holds an EA license, Insurance and Securities licenses (Series 6, 63, 65), and the CFP® designation. He is passionate about opening access to high-quality exam preparation resources and helping learners prepare more effectively for professional certification exams. In this episode you will learn: - How reference queries maintain parent-child lineage and automa...

[PL-300] 15, Building Fact and Dimension Tables in Power Query 14.09.2026 2:51

This podcast is made by Ran Chen, who holds an EA license, Insurance and Securities licenses (Series 6, 63, 65), and the CFP® designation. He is passionate about opening access to high-quality exam preparation resources and helping learners prepare more effectively for professional certification exams. In this episode you will learn: - How to transform flat source data into fact and dimension tabl...

[PL-300] 14, Converting JSON, XML, and Lists into Tables 13.09.2026 4:11

This podcast is made by Ran Chen, who holds an EA license, Insurance and Securities licenses (Series 6, 63, 65), and the CFP® designation. He is passionate about opening access to high-quality exam preparation resources and helping learners prepare more effectively for professional certification exams. In this episode you will learn: - How to convert top-level JSON and XML list structures into tab...

[PL-300] 13, Pivoting, Unpivoting, and Transposing Data 12.09.2026 3:58

This podcast is made by Ran Chen, who holds an EA license, Insurance and Securities licenses (Series 6, 63, 65), and the CFP® designation. He is passionate about opening access to high-quality exam preparation resources and helping learners prepare more effectively for professional certification exams. In this episode you will learn: - Why Unpivot Other Columns is necessary to dynamically absorb n...

[PL-300] 12, Grouping and Aggregating Rows 11.09.2026 3:47

This podcast is made by Ran Chen, who holds an EA license, Insurance and Securities licenses (Series 6, 63, 65), and the CFP® designation. He is passionate about opening access to high-quality exam preparation resources and helping learners prepare more effectively for professional certification exams. In this episode you will learn: - How single and multiple key combinations dictate table granula...