Analysis Services vs. Power BI Premium

[nirvana_moksh]

Hello All,

I read as much as I could about Analysis Services and Power BI Premium and I am confused on what is better for the current need that we have thought about cost, efforts, and benefits. Analysis services based on my understanding, this is more of an open model which can serve as a single source of truth and various other tools can connect to it as well vs. the locked down data sets in Power BI models. With that being said am I right in saying that Azure Analysis Services, in essence, is just another kind of ecosystem that has to be maintained and kept in sync with like the data warehouse already in place?

For PBI premium our main intention to moving in this direction is:

1.  The per model dataset data limit is removed thereby allowing larger dataset/reports to be pushed.
2.  Use of Paginated Reports which will finally allow true parameter run reports to run like how it in SSRS which currently cannot be done in PBI
3. Not so sure of this - But the cost of having a P1 node of premium run vs. the effort of time and cost of an Azure Analysis instance is lower?

Any insights on both with pros and cons will be helpful. The problem that we are trying to address is of data model push of larger than 1 GB, having the ability to have true parameter run reports wherein users can choose the parameter value like how it is in SSRS.

Thank You

[mwegener]

Hi,

I read that Power BI will be a superset of SSAS.

In my point of view the Power BI model (data set) is a limited version of Azure Analysis Services tabular model. So if you only need more space for your data model, you could set up your model on Azure Analysis Services and use Power BI as frontend.

kinds regards

Marcus

[nirvana_moksh]

Well space is just one aspect that we are trying to solve for, true date parameter reports are achievable via Paginate Reports which is a PBI premium offering and idk if Azure Analysis Services will address that with the same cost and work effort as compared to PBI Premium.

[mwegener]

Hi,
i'm no sure what you mean with "true date parameter". Could you describe or show an szenario?

I think, "Reporting Services" as Azure Service is only available with Power BI Premium for now.

[nirvana_moksh]

Hello,

So by date parameter report, I mean allowing users to select a date that hits the DB (for instance a SQL DB) and retrieves data for that date by submitting the Stored Proc against that selected date. Also, I am not entirely clear by what you mean by "Reporting Services", did you mean paginated reports in PBI Premium?

Thank You

[mwegener]

Okay, is it possible to transfer the logic from the stored procedure to a data model?

So the user selects a date from the date table and gets the data from the related tables... Maybe with some DAX calculated values...

Yes, with "Reporting Services" I mean "Paginated Reports" or better the functionaltiy to execute RDL Reports.

[nirvana_moksh]

If this was just one instance then a conversion of a stored proc to a daily data dump to a table would make sense, but this is not a good approach from a DB standpoint containing more than 80 stored procs. I guess I have answered my own question and that PBI premium makes more sense than just Azure Analysis Services. Thank you.

[stretcharm]

Don't forget premium (and Pro) has the new dataflows this will let you build data sets that can be shared with reports or powerbi models in a similar way to a azure AS does.  Also incremental loading and aggreations bridge some of other azure AS features.

https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/introducing-power-bi-data-prep-wtih-dataflows/

[nirvana_moksh]

True data flows do bridge a lot of gaps now and bring it much closer to Azure AS functionality, I guess the major difference is paginated reports in PBI Premium vs no Paginated report in just Azure AS (correct me if I am wrong on that claim?)

[stretcharm]

Yep deal breaker if you want to use the cloud.

I currently use the powerbi report server on premise for RS and PBI with SSAS so got everything but no cloud yet. Looking at options for next year.

[nirvana_moksh]

Likewise looking for options for next year. I think the best would be upgrade to PBI premium and enjoy all the current and upcoming features of Premium instead of spinning an instance of Azure AS and maintaining that and not getting all the Premium features either.