Power BI Dataset vs SSAS Cubes

[ccesarrg]

I'm need of investigating if move from SSAS Cubes to PBI Datasets instead would be a great thing. I need to know this points:

1. Processing time for both cube and dataset - which is faster?
2. User time for both cube and dataset. Time building reports, which one brings data back faster?

It would be also nice to know any other pros/cons that exist in making this change. Is it worthy the time and effort to miggrate our projects in all cases or depend on which kind of project I'm working on?

[tackytechtom · Accepted solution]

Hi @ccesarrg ,

I guess the answer to your question is a typical "it depends". Power BI datasets is a superset of SSAS / AAS meaning that there might be some features that you cannot use in SSAS / AAS but you can in PBI. Also, new features might appeear later in SSAS / AAS. Having saiid that if you have security requirements to store data on-prem SSAS could be the option to go, although you could also lock in your Power BI Premium Capacity into your VNet if that might cover such a security concern.

There is tons of stuff out there where the three are compared to each other. Here a video by Chris Wagner which I find useful where he covers both of your questions:

Power BI Q&A - SSAS vs AAS vs Power BI Premium - YouTube

Concerning migrating from SSAS / AAS to Power BI Premium. I was part of a project where we did this and that went surprisingly easy moslty due to the XMLA endpoints. You could even use Visual Studio to deploy the model to a Power BI Premium workspace (while I strongly recommend to use Tabular Editor).

Hope this helps at least a bit!

/Tom
https://www.tackytech.blog/
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