Forum Discussion
Measures and CalcColumns in Power BI vs Tabular model (replace SSAS with Power BI?)
You need Analysis Services if you have one of the following requirements:
- You need to have row level security
- Your data set is greater than 250MB
- You need to have a fine grained control over how your model is refreshed from the source data (partitioning)
If the aforementioned requirements are not present, then using Power Pivot or Power BI Desktop to build your model and publish it to Power BI is a valid and wonderful choice.
pmdci,
The value of the tabular model is that you can directly connect to it from the Power BI service. Create your reports up there, and its a live connection that automatically refreshes whenever you update your model on the back end.
The desktop designer can be used as your replacement for the tabular model, but if you already have one, you are just adding an extra step. I build my report visualizations on the site.
The AS Connector can be downloaded from your app.powerbi.com site (click the down arrow in the upper right)
More info:
Hi Eno1978,
I think you misunderstood my question.
What I am trying to find out is if I can simply replace the SSAS tabular model by creating measures, calculated columns and relationships in Power BI instead -- thus making SSAS irrelevant.
Bottom line: If I could replace SSAS with a cloud-only feature, I would.
pmdci the Power BI desktop is not a "cloud only" feature, and the site doesn't allow you to build models.
Regardless, Could you move your model into the desktop tool? "Sure". Here are the trade-offs.
SSAS - row level security (Desktop - none)
SSAS - Does not store you information in the cloud (Desktop will)
SSAS - Live connection to your model (Desktop - only update up to 8 times a day)
I would not compare the modeling capability in Power BI directly to SSAS as equal in performance and capabilities. In terms of the tools, I would say (in general) the modeling tool in the desktop tool is designed for small projects, and SSAS is best utilized in larger company wide implementations. (especially if you have the option).
pmdci, SSAS is actually part of Power BI Desktop and Excel Power Pivot. When Microsoft incorporated SSAS into the Desktop and Power Pivot, several enterprise features were made unavailable (security, partitioning, etc) but from the pure modeling perspective, you have pretty much the same features in SSAS and Desktop/Power Pivot.
I think that not having a clound only SSAS like product, or Platform as a Service (PaaS) Analysis Services (similar to SQL Azure) is a big miss for MIcrosoft and I hope that it gets addressed soon.