Can I say that Power BI acts as a Data Warehouse, even if it isn't one?

[Dobias]

Hey all,

I'm currently writing a paper on Business Intelligence and Reporting and I was wondering if I could say the following line: "Power BI can act as a data warehouse" if I then specify that Power BI doesn't have a data warehouse. I know that Power BI is usually used complementary to a data warehouse, but it would be so helpful for my paper if I could say that Power BI can act as a data warehouse. Thanks in advance! Cheers

[cnweke]

Definitely not. 

If you connect Power BI to your operational DBs, transform and then report you're still querying operational DBs which should (preferably) not be done for enterprise level BI.

a DW combines data from various sources into a single source of the truth, it's the result of an ETL process.

To put it into practice, if you clean your data, do a ton of transformations and modelling straight in PBI, bypassing a DWH/SSAS you'll have to do it again for your next model, which is time consuming.

Also, if two people are modelling/building reports there's no consistency, which a DWH ensures. Let's say you're reporting on customers, one person might say a customer is a company (B2B) who buys services/products from your company and another person might model customers as the person who runs the actual company.

A DWH's customer dimension would provide a 'stable' definition for all the (relevant) business objects in their respective dimensions.

[Dobias]

Thanks for your answer. I think I will then just say "Power BI shows some of the characteristics that a data warehouse has, such as being subject oriented and time variant" and that it is advisable to base Power BI on a data warehouse.