Power Platform Dataflows vs Power Platform Dataflows - technical difference

[KyleEdw]

Hi all,

For any of the Data Engineers out there or more technical users, I'm wondering If someone can ellude to the technical differences between Power Platform Dataflows and PowerBI Dataflows.

My understanding is essentially this:

PBI dataflows enable data to be injected into a lake (Azure DL Gen 2 in PBI case) and later a dataset

Power Platform dataflows allow data to be injected into a lake and/or a CDS and later a dataset

Power Platform dataflows appear to have all the originally functionality of PBI dataflows + more. More in the sense, that you still have the option to access PowerBI dataflows via the workspace (which will pull data from Azure DL Gen 2 - and also in this case Azure DL Gen 2 is not locked like it is without the Power Platform Dataflows, allowing you to manage/add to this lake), you have the new option to access the CDS via the Power App linked entities (and additionally to push data from the CDS to the Data lake).

Technically this seems like Power Platform Dataflows strictly dominate PowerBI Dataflows, however there must be some naunces or arguments in the case of PowerBI dataflows or otherwise the feature would be obselete upon Power Platform Dataflows emergence.

Feel free to correct me if I over-simplifed / missed something. Some in-depth tech insight here is appreciated

K

[Anonymous]

Kyle,

With my understanding, what you're writing seems correct. At this point, the main differentiator would be the pricepoint for both versions as well. There's a big difference in pricing for Power Apps and Power BI Pro. The fact that there's a subset of features in Power BI Pro is something you have to grow into as well .. Power BI Premium has the advantage of it's capacity based licensing, where you'll need a bunch of Power Apps licenses if the audience starts growing.

A while ago, I found some random tweets on the interwebz alluding to both types of dataflows becoming one more streamlined version. But, these are rumors for which I have no proof to back it up..