There should be a way to use the SSAS Tabular Connector without AD Sync, e.g. by using CustomData on the connection string.
Absolutely - and the need is greater than that. A proxy account may be required by designed, so passing user credentials may not help. Consider the scenario where I have an SSAS model that has no per-user security requirements - it's homogeneous to the entire organization. Managing users on that model could be cumbersome, and an unnecessary step. Or I may be an ISV running a reference model...... I may want to make it available to everyone - much like the way the demo dashboard is done in the current Power BI Preview.
