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vanessafvg's avatar
vanessafvg
Community Champion
8 years ago

SSAS Tabular Vs SSAS Multi Dimensional

if you are using power bi to develop dashboards from a cube, do you think its better to create the cube in tabular rather than MDX and why?   currently we are creating a cube in via direct querry m...
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sdjensen's avatar
sdjensen
Solution Sage
8 years ago

Well that question totally depends on what features you need to build the cube. There is still some very nice features in Multidimensional that isn't available in Tabular. But if you can build the cube you need in Tabular then I would go that way. Power BI's own models are build on the same engine as Tabular models hence there is a better "understanding" between Power BI and Tabular than Power BI and Multidimensional.

 

A few weeks ago I attended a session with Chris Webb where he talked about this question and he listed several things that isn't supported in Power BI when using direct query to Multidimensional, but also stated (and I agree with this) if you already have a Multidimensional cube you should only switch to Tabular if there is things you need to do in Power BI that is not supported for Multidimensional. However if you want to start over and build a new cube I would go with Tabular unless there is features that you need that is only supported by Multidimensional.

  • vanessafvg's avatar
    vanessafvg
    Community Champion
    8 years ago

    sdjensen thats what i was thinking we are starting from scratch.

     

    thanks

  • vanessafvg's avatar
    vanessafvg
    Community Champion
    8 years ago

    sdjensen ps do you know where i can find what is not possible to do in MDX direct query vs Tabular direct query?

    • sdjensen's avatar
      sdjensen
      Solution Sage
      8 years ago

      Here is some of the things that currenly doesn't work with live connection to SSAS MD:

      • Q&A
      • Quick Insights
      • Creating report-level measures
      • Quick measures
      • See Records
      • Forecasting on line charts
      • Clustering on scatter charts
      • Explain increase/decrease

       

      SSAS MD features that isn't currently supported by Power BI:

      • Cell security – you will not be allowed to connect!
      • Actions
      • Named sets
      • Binary images stored in dimension attributes
      • Hiding unknown members
      • HTTP connections
      • Translations
      • Setting (most) connection string properties
      • Writeback

       

      • vanessafvg's avatar
        vanessafvg
        Community Champion
        8 years ago

        sdjensen oh wow thats a big one, role based security doesn't work with mdx and direct query in power bi?