Office & DB Requirements for Power BI Service and Power BI Desktop

[antexity]

We are strongly considering going with Power BI.    We are currently running Office 2010 and our data source is on an Oracle 12C DB.

Three questions:

1. We are running Office 2010, are we losing any functionality with Power BI Service or Desktop? If so do you strongly suggest upgrading to Office 2016?

2. Can Power BI and SSIS connect to our Oracle 12c DB without the use of any Replication software such as DBMOTO?

3.  Use case for using Power BI Desktop vs Power BI Service.  If we roll out Power BI Service to 500 users,  is it safe to say all users can use BI service without the need of BI Desktop, if not what are the advantages of BI desktop over BI Service

Thanks in advance

[Greg_Deckler · Accepted solution]

1. Not really, Power BI Desktop and Service are really pretty separate from Office 2010

2. Yes, that should not be an issue but I would verify Power BI connectivity and Oracle version compatibility. https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/powerbi-desktop-connect-oracle-database/

3. Power BI Desktop allows you to manipulate the data model to add columns, measures, mashup data from other sources, etc. The Service does not.

[KHorseman · Accepted solution]

3. Service is mostly meant for consumption, with a few fairly trivial exceptions. Desktop is for authoring.

[CahabaData · Accepted solution]

one last thing on this topic; PBI install is 64 bit but many Office installs are 32.  When Office is 32 bit linkng to excel is fine but not to Access tables - where you need a 64 bit driver added separately.

[Greg_Deckler · Accepted solution]

1. Not really, Power BI Desktop and Service are really pretty separate from Office 2010

2. Yes, that should not be an issue but I would verify Power BI connectivity and Oracle version compatibility. https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/powerbi-desktop-connect-oracle-database/

3. Power BI Desktop allows you to manipulate the data model to add columns, measures, mashup data from other sources, etc. The Service does not.

[KHorseman · Accepted solution]

3. Service is mostly meant for consumption, with a few fairly trivial exceptions. Desktop is for authoring.