Kimball SQL Datamart vs SSAS Tabular as datasource for PowerBI

[lyndon5000]

Hi All,

Looking for some architectural advice for PowerBI datasources. We have subject area specific datamarts, created from our main data warehouse. The datamarts are modeled with facts and dimensions using Kimball techniques. The plan is to allow subject matter experts to do adhoc reporting and discovery in PowerBI using one of these datamarts. The volume of data is not huge, total of fact records < 2 million.

In the corporate landscape a common datasource for PowerBI appears to be SSAS tabular and is referenced heavily by Microsoft. We dont currently have SSAS, so are there any significant advantages to loading the Kimball datamart into SSAS tabular, to then load the tabular model into powerBI - ones that justify the setup, infrastructure, configuration and maintenance of a SSAS instance?

thanks,

Lyndon.

[v-jiascu-msft · Accepted solution]

Hi @lyndon5000,

To be honest, I'm not familiar with Kimball. In my opinion, I will use Power BI to connect to the data source directly unless it's necessary to load into SSAS first. Because Power BI is already a powerful analysis tool. Please refer to https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/.

Regarding the advantages of loading to SSAS, I think we can leverage the power of the Server and the modeling ability. Please refer to analysis-services/tabular-models/tabular-models-ssas.

Best Regards,

Dale