Expanded tables are a core concept in DAX, Malloy has something similar although with a default behavior:).
To see the difference let’s build the same Model in DAX and Malloy and see where it is the same and where it differ.
The Model is based on TPC-H Dataset, it is a simple model as it contains only 1 Base Table ” Lineitem”
The Same Model using Malloy
you can download the Malloy here : it is just a text file
Count the Number of customers
Malloy : results 999 982
Query: custoners_bought_something is {
aggregate: cnt is count( distinct customer.C_CUSTKEY)
}
DAX : 1 500 000
I know the table contains 1.5 M, so why Malloy is giving me wrong results, it turn out , it is by design, Malloy consider only the customers that bought something in lineitem, you can see it from the SQL Generated
DAX by default ignore the “graph” if the measure target only 1 table, to get the number of customers who bought an item, you need something like this
Take away
Maybe I am biased but I think DAX behavior make more sense, if I target only a table then the graph should be ignored, I think the relationship should be used only when I use fields from different tables.
Project Controls blog 
Your query is within Lineitems so it is doing what you asked. If you want to query customers you can query the table directly with
“`
query: table(‘customers.parquet’)->{aggregate: c is count()}
“`
if you want to make customers an object you want to query often make it a source:
“`
source: customers is table(‘customers.parquet){}
query: customers->->{aggregate: c is count()}
“`
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Thank lloyd, I really appreciate you taking the time to reply, I was hoping that the default behavior of Malloy will be changed to include relationship only when a group by or a filter is included in the Query and not by default as it is today.
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