Is Power BI ROLAP or MOLAP ?

[Anonymous]

Hi,

Quick architectural question on Power BI. 

When we publish Pbix report from desktop to Power BI service, it publishes both "Visuals" under Report and the "Model" under Dataset. Is it right to say at this point, we are changing from ROLAP to MOLAP ?

I understand , to qualify this to be MOLAP we need a Cube Engine to preprocess which is what Power BI does under-the-hood with Azure Analysis Service Tabular model. 

If you are not sure about what is ROLAP and MOLAP, here is a link for ref. 

[Anonymous · Accepted solution]

I thought ROLAP and MOLAP were cube terminology.

Power BI report aren't really cube.

You can do a cube like report if you use the powerbi excel plugin and use your exel file with a powerbi source. You have a pivot table and can use all the column of your powerbi file as dimensions. You need to have measure in your powerbi file to have actual data that can be used in your pivot table though.

[Anonymous]

Hi Vincent, 

Yes, they are cube terminology and Power BI under the hood is Tabular Model of Cube(similar to Multi dimensional)  in Azure Analysis Service.