Power BI vs "Traditional" Report Writer - Updated Opinions for 2020

[drewbyty]

I wanted to get fresh opinions and thoughts on this since the threads asking this questions are dated (2016-2018).

The basic question is for a company that sells solutions that are web based and hosted in Azure what reporting options are available. I understand the trend and even great benefit of data transform, analysis, etc.. that Power BI offers, but there are still needs for a "traditional" report with groupings, sub-totals and such. A few questions I would like to get feedback on:

1. Is SSRS still a viable option for Azure cloud data to fill the need for traditional style reports?
2. Does SSRS have a roadmap for development, with a cloud-based approach for support?

There are other 3rd party reporting solutions on the market as well, and there is a need for customers that work in a web based cloud solutions to "build" their own reports that are traditional styled in nature. I am struggling with finding a solution for Power BI and SSRS in this capacity. Other solutions such as ActiveReportJS and even desktop solutions that use cloud datasources seem a better fit in this scenario.

[dm-p · Accepted solution]

Hi @drewbyty, and welcome aboard!

The SSRS path for the Power BI/Azure ecosystem is branded as Paginated Reports. You might already be aware of this but as you haven't specifically mentioned it in your post, I thought I'd better flag it just in case it hasn't come up in your research.

It is built using SSRS. It doesn't yet have full feature parity with SSRS on-prem but is catching up and is very much actively developed and maintained to fill the functional gaps that you've identified in your post.

It's a currently a premium-only feature and has its own report builder application, which is the continued evolution of the original standalone SSRS Report Builder app - I'm not sure if there is VS/SSDT support. It's speculated that it may come to Pro at some point but there's nothing firm on this so I would avoid banking on this for now.

I don't have premium capacity to advise further, but the linked doc should provide a good overview and there are a number of recent blog posts and videos if you search for Power BI Paginated Reports.

Hopefully this might help a bit. Good luck!

Daniel