AS Tabular model or in Power BI Model

[Yted]

I am trying to get some information on whether you should be building the data model in Power BI or develop it in SSDT for deployment to SSAS Tabular server. What are the pros / cons for each? How do you decide? 

I have noticed that if you connect to the SSAS Tabular model on server, that you need to go back to that model to make any changes. If you do it in Power BI it's stored within the .pibx file. If you use SSAS server then it's only one model to manage?

Any assistance / guideance is appreciated.

[v-caliao-msft]

Hi @Yted,

Power BI does of course need a data model, but often times there is no reason to create a new one for Power BI.

If you use a Power BI desktop, you can use a SSAS tabular model, or you can create data model in Power BI desktop. Essentially, there has no differences between them.

If you use Power BI services, you need to use an existed data model since it's not supported to manage data model on Power BI services.

Regards,

Charlie Liao

[reneincer]

I have noticed if you connect live to a SSDT tabular model you can´t modify the model neither create any measure.

If you import, it doesnt get the model and relations but import all data in one table (n x n x n rows), so I have to import dimension by dimension and then make the relations in the Power BI model

It would be great if we can import tabular model to Power BI in order to extend calculations with DAX for our users, and not only for developers with SSDT, or if we can extend models to Power BI Live connections.

I dont know if i'm doing something wrong or Power BI doesnt have currently this functionality

I prefer to have it as a SSDT tabular in order to have it centralized and shared among users.

[rajendrav2016]

Yes Correct with Live connection, you cannot model it however you can create measure in power bi