Power BI Premium vs. Azure Analysis Services

Hi ElizabethTachji ...sorry for the delay in replying.  One could create a data model in a pbix file and publish that into Power BI Premium.  But that really doesn't seem like the kind of thing that would tolerate large volumes of data very well.

I was able to publish a data model from Visual Studio directly into Power BI Premium, but only if there were no security roles/members defined.  How Analysis Services handles RLS and how Power BI reports handle RLS are very different.

ElizabethTachji I realized I didn't completely answer your question.

You can develop the data model in one of three ways:

• In a pbix file just like any other data model and publish to a workspace.  Probably not the best idea for a large volume of data, either in terms of number of tables or records
• In Visual Studio using the add-in for Analysis Services Tabular data models.  Substitute the Power BI Premium XMLA endpoint instead of a server name/address.  Send me a PM and I'm happy to help walk through steps.  You cannot have any security defined using this method.  All security has to be defined in the reports themselves..
• You could probably use Tabular Editor as well but I haven't tried this.  Same restrictions on security.

The second method is better because you can handle a much larger set of data in a much more controlled way.  UNLESS you have a lot of security requirements because Power BI Premium only supports RLS defined at the report level and not in the data source itself.

This isn't ideal, but it seems that's the way it is.