Skip to main content
cancel
Showing results for 
Search instead for 
Did you mean: 

Earn the coveted Fabric Analytics Engineer certification. 100% off your exam for a limited time only!

Reply
pbiuser10
Frequent Visitor

Dataflows vs SSIS

My skillset is PBI centric, not SSAS/RS/IS centric.

With the launch of Dataflows, should I focus on them or should I study SSIS? Advantages of SSIS over DF?
1 ACCEPTED SOLUTION

@pbiuser10 I would spend my time getting to know and understand dataflows as that is the future. But that opinion doesn't mean anything if you aren't using the cloud, do all your work in SQL on premises, etc. Then learn SSIS.

Dataflows will open doors for the organization above and beyond what SSIS does in terms of centrally locating important data, based on all the M queries and ETL code you write in your Power BI files, and support all the latest and greatest MSFT offers with new features. SSIS is an old standby and really only way you could do ETL, things are changing, if you can - I suggest focusing on dataflows.


Looking for more Power BI tips, tricks & tools? Check out PowerBI.tips the site I co-own with Mike Carlo. Also, if you are near SE WI? Join our PUG Milwaukee Brew City PUG

View solution in original post

3 REPLIES 3

@pbiuser10 I would spend my time getting to know and understand dataflows as that is the future. But that opinion doesn't mean anything if you aren't using the cloud, do all your work in SQL on premises, etc. Then learn SSIS.

Dataflows will open doors for the organization above and beyond what SSIS does in terms of centrally locating important data, based on all the M queries and ETL code you write in your Power BI files, and support all the latest and greatest MSFT offers with new features. SSIS is an old standby and really only way you could do ETL, things are changing, if you can - I suggest focusing on dataflows.


Looking for more Power BI tips, tricks & tools? Check out PowerBI.tips the site I co-own with Mike Carlo. Also, if you are near SE WI? Join our PUG Milwaukee Brew City PUG

Sorry I couldn't disagree more. If you have a few dozen sssis packages then ssis integration runtime will be more expensive after that dataflows becomes expontially more expensive. With a few hundred ssis packages dataflows is 2-3 times more expensive that leaving an ssis integration runtime on all the time. What Microsoft is not telling anyone is that once you use a dataflow to spin up the spark cluster and reuse it for the next dataflows you have to take into the price calculation the cosumption cost of each dataflow and the total time the spark cluster was on. In essence you are paying to have the cluster on and everytime you use it, thus double paying. 

Seth - awesome answer and quite aligned with what I suspected.    We are a mixture of cloud & on-prem, so DF seems like the right choice.

 

BTW, grew up in Green Bay (nowhere near there anymore)...but Go Bucks!

Helpful resources

Announcements
April AMA free

Microsoft Fabric AMA Livestream

Join us Tuesday, April 09, 9:00 – 10:00 AM PST for a live, expert-led Q&A session on all things Microsoft Fabric!

March Fabric Community Update

Fabric Community Update - March 2024

Find out what's new and trending in the Fabric Community.

Top Solution Authors
Top Kudoed Authors