Power BI embedded or Rest api? What should I use and what's the main differences?

[Zuv]

I am trying to embedd dashboards into my web application.

Right now I made it working with power bi embedded and Azure workspaces and it works. 

But I saw that it is possible to make it working with Power bi rest api and iframes, but it asks logins via Oauth every time, right?

What is the differences between embedded and rest api for embedding dashboards into web applications?

Is it possible to use only power bi rest api and iframe it straight from the Power BI Service?

Is it possible to use Rest Api and Row level security?

Thank you

[ankitpatira]

@Zuv Below is the summary for you to differentiate as of now.

Power BI Embedded

fr

Azure service to let you host power bi reports and dashboards that you embed into your application. Your users don't need power bi account and they access power bi reports / dashboards via your application. Licensing model is different for this purpose and you can check more info here.

Power BI REST API

Power BI REST API lets you perform automated tasks over reports / dashboards in power bi service. Here's the link to all operations available currently via REST APIs.

iFrame

iFrame that you're talking about is generated through Publish to Web feature. Please note publish to web feature makes your report available to anyone over internet that has that publish to web link. There is no authentication to report via publish to web and you can read about it more here.

So you can use REST APIs to push data to your datasets in power bi service in real-time and use iFrame publish to web to embed it into your application (without any authentication). Hope that make sense.

[Zuv]

@ankitpatira, thanks a lot for a clear explanation.

But I don't understand this part:

https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/powerbi-developer-integrate-report-get-report/

They are getting report with authentication, so it's not public available and it's not in Azure workspace, so it means it's not Power Bi Embedded per se.

And why and when we should use this embedding solution? Is it working with row level security?

Many thanks!

[ankitpatira]

@Zuv so it looks like this is a third option which I wasn't aware of. Good thing is there is a sample app so you can download that and use it as a basis of your testing for RLS.