PowerBi Desktop or PowerBI Service

[martynhale]

I'm about to start a new project for a client. The data source will be an on premise 2008 SQL server.

I'm not fully sure whether to start the development from within PowerBI desktop and then publish to PowerBI service, or to start within PowerBI service. Does PBI Service have the same level of functionality as PBI Desktop?

Regards,

Martyn

[v-yuezhe-msft]

Hi martynhale,

Adding to ankitpatira’s post , you can connect directly to SQL Server Analysis Services Tabular model databases from Power BI service and create reports. In this case, Power BI Enterprise Gateway is required. For more details, please review this article.

Thanks,
Lydia Zhang

[ankitpatira]

@martynhale You should strat with powerbi desktop and then publish to powerbi service. Unfortunately in powerbi service you don't get data modelling functionality which is only available in powerbi desktop.