Power BI vs Data Warehouse

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Anonymous wrote:

V much agree - have I missed something though? Once I've connected to SSAS Tabular I can't see how to use Desktop Designer to mash this up with other sources in reports/datasets? We can mash SSAS Tabular data up in the Power BI service though. Great if I'm wrong on this though! :)

 

 Yes, you are confusing SSAS Tabular with a data warehouse. They are not the same thing. You can only have 1 data model and it is either in SSAS tabular or Power BI. You can bring in all the data you want from a data warehouse and mash it up in Power bi, 

Again, have I missed something basic here? I recognise that Power BI uses the same engine but when I import non-SSAS Tabular data into Power BI and visualise this in a chart I can right click on the chart, select 'see records' and I can then see underlying row-level data. If I direct query from  SSAS Tabular, put Tabular data in a chart then and then right click on it I can't see the 'see records' option any more. Again great if I'm missing something obvious!

 what you can see on a chart and what is beneath the numbers are 2 different things. I can create 2 charts that both show the number 4, but one can be made up of 4 rows worth 1 each and the other can be made up of 1 row worth 4.  You could then say the second one doesn't show the detail, but that is not correct. It shows the detail that is available. My assumption is that the 2 scenarios you are describing are not the same thing, otherwise you would Ben able to see the same detail,

Yes, redundant was probably the wrong choice of words as it uses the same engine as Power BI. I suppose I meant that Power BI seems to offer lower barriers of entry to most users than compared with SSAS Tabular. From my novice perspective, it feels like Power BI has a USP whereas SSAS Tabular has a bit of an identity crisis between its older OLAP brother and younger Power BI brother.

 

 Yes, power bi has a lower cost.  For many companies Power BI is a better choice than SSAS Tabular, but not for all companies. SSAS Tabular is an Enterprise scale tool and will have a long future in my view. Think of it like computers. It used to be impracticable for people to buy a computer for home because all you could buy was an IBM Mainframe for millions of dollars. Then the PC was invented and people started buying them.    A PC has never been a substitute for a mainframe and mainframes are still used widely. 

If something is going to die, it is SSAS Multi Dimensional. It would be very rare that a company would start a new green field SSAS MD project these days. If you already have a large sunk cost then that is different. But if you are starting from scratch I think there would be very very few instances where a company would choose MD over Tabular. 

If you change your query mode to "Import data" rather than "direct query" you will have more functionality in Power BI.

Hi,

In my understanding when you do Direct Query, you literally send a query to your db (tabular in this case) when user access to the contents on Power BI, thus it is not possible you add any calculation further after db returns the data;

If you do Import for your datasets, you store the data you need in the in-memory DB in Power BI cloud which allows you to do the calculations you need for those data, as they are "in" your data model.

So to satisfy your need, simply build another workbook which uses import of your datasets.

Best Regards,