Forum Discussion
tool choice to create SSAS tabular cube - Power BI Desktop vs Visual Studio
I am trying to determine the pros and cons of what tool to use to create an SSAS tabular cube. I am considering Power BI Desktop and Visual Studio.
For reference, to create a cube in Power BI Desktop, I create a normal "report" (pbix file) as usual, but without any visuals. (So, it has the data model and measures defined.) I then publish this "report" to a workspace, and other "real" reports consume from the dataset / cube (in a Live connection) that it generates.
What are the pros and cons of creating tabular cubes in Power BI Desktop versus in Visual Studio (beyond the obvious things, such as tool availability / familiarity)? And, is there a best practice regarding this tool selection (e.g., go with Visual Studio unless necessary)?
9 Replies
- parry2k
Super User
Anonymous I guess this will help Power BI as a superset of Azure Analysis Services | Microsoft Power BI Blog | Microsoft Power BI
✨ Follow us on LinkedIn and to our YouTube channel
Learn about conditional formatting at Microsoft Reactor
My latest blog post The Power of Using Calculation Groups with Inactive Relationships (Part 1) (perytus.com) I would ❤ Kudos if my solution helped. 👉 If you can spend time posting the question, you can also make efforts to give Kudos to whoever helped to solve your problem. It is a token of appreciation!
⚡ Visit us at https://perytus.com, your one-stop-shop for Power BI-related projects/training/consultancy.
Thanks for the link. That was very helpful. Is it safe to say that, if you use Power BI shared capacity, then use AAS (or SSAS) for the cube creation, but if you use Power BI Premium, then use Power BI?
Also, I found this link:
Choosing to Model in Power BI vs SSAS Tabular (pragmaticworks.com)
- bcdobbs
Community Champion
I think you might be confusing some of your terminology.
Power Bi/VS/Tabular Editor all work on tabular models. It's just a choice of which interface you like (some expose more than others).
- bcdobbs
I think alot depends on the size and complexity of your model.
I generally find Power Bi is a very rapid way of starting things off. I then publish an initial version.At that point I switch to Tabular Editor but VS would also work which I find easier to use for on going maintenance without having to constantly republish from Power Bi (work via XLMA end point).
I see two main advantages in that approach:1) Easier model maintenance.
2) Tabular and VS expose model.bim which is JSON and plays nicely with GIT.
- parry2k
Anonymous I only use Power BI regardless of license Pro or Premium.
✨ Follow us on LinkedIn and to our YouTube channel
Learn about conditional formatting at Microsoft Reactor
My latest blog post The Power of Using Calculation Groups with Inactive Relationships (Part 1) (perytus.com) I would ❤ Kudos if my solution helped. 👉 If you can spend time posting the question, you can also make efforts to give Kudos to whoever helped to solve your problem. It is a token of appreciation!
⚡ Visit us at https://perytus.com, your one-stop-shop for Power BI-related projects/training/consultancy.
- parry2k
Agreed with bcdobbs . I assume Tabular Editor as an internal part of the Power BI and always miss to point that out since I live in TE most of the time. Thanks for bringing that out bcdobbs
✨ Follow us on LinkedIn and to our YouTube channel
Learn about conditional formatting at Microsoft Reactor
My latest blog post The Power of Using Calculation Groups with Inactive Relationships (Part 1) (perytus.com) I would ❤ Kudos if my solution helped. 👉 If you can spend time posting the question, you can also make efforts to give Kudos to whoever helped to solve your problem. It is a token of appreciation!
⚡ Visit us at https://perytus.com, your one-stop-shop for Power BI-related projects/training/consultancy.
