Leveraging DAX query tables for staging Data Transformations

When designing a data warehousing solution, it is typical to allocate certain data transformations to the ETL layer, particularly those that would be easier or more efficient to do outside of the cube. At the same time - prior to Excel 2013 release - developing multi-step data transformations in a Data Model was, whenever possible, a factor that increased the complexity (and lowered maintainability) of DAX formulas.