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pmdci's avatar
pmdci
Advocate V
11 years ago
Solved

Measures and CalcColumns in Power BI vs Tabular model (replace SSAS with Power BI?)

Hello,   I have a data-mart on-premise, and on top of that I have an ssas tabular model.   I've been playing with Power BI on my deskop and I noticed how it allow us to create our own calculated ...
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  • andre's avatar
    andre
    11 years ago

    You need Analysis Services if you have one of the following requirements:

     

    1. You need to have row level security
    2. Your data set is greater than 250MB
    3. 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.

     

andre's avatar
andre
Memorable Member
11 years ago

You need Analysis Services if you have one of the following requirements:

 

  1. You need to have row level security
  2. Your data set is greater than 250MB
  3. 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's avatar
    pmdci
    Advocate V
    10 years ago

    Thanks everybody for their input.

     

    Just to clarify: The rationale behind my question is whether I can remove SSAS server and have all the calculated columns, measures relationships and so on created using the Power BI desktop designer instead. This way Power BI would connect straight into the relational DB (the data mart).

     

    My understanding from Andre's answer is that the modelling features of Power BI have some limitations:

     

    1. No row level security
    2. Model cannot be greater than 250MB
    3. No fine grained control over how model is refreshed from the source data (partitioning)

     

    Am I right to assume that if this limitations are overcome by MSFT, then an SSAS server would no longer be necessary in my case?

     

    Regards,

    P.

     

    PS: Apologies for the late response. I got no email alerting me of replies into the thread.

  • pmdci's avatar
    pmdci
    Advocate V
    10 years ago

    Thanks Andre!

     

    Actually I got all confused due to the overlap of BI products by Microsoft. But one thing that put it all into perspective for me is that Power BI's modelling features are like PowerPivot in Excel. Once I got that in my mind, then it all made sense.

     

    It is simply "PowerPivot for Power BI" -- for the lack of a better term.

     

    Regards,

    P.