Let's talk Power BI. So what is it, well it's another reporting application made by Microsoft. One would wonder why Microsoft would suddenly start from scratch when they already have SSRS right? Well I'm going to try and explain the reasoning for this and why not stop support for SSRS all together. That would probably be armageddon if that did actually happen, just look what happened to FoxPro.

Power BI is something I would call eye candy. It's visually appealing and easy on the eyes when it comes to visuals or diagrams. I say this because I've been through the rugged SSRS which to be far isn't that bad but when compared against Power BI, there are some drastic differences. For one, based on how you have your environment set up and the requirements of the report it could take a bit more time on Power BI then on SSRS.

Lets take an example, say we want to build a report were the user wants a table where every other line is grey. Going the SSRS route assuming we're utilizing Visual Studio, you main thought is well I guess I got to go add in some calculation at the row level based on whether it's grouped or not. On the Power BI side, it's already built-in where you just have it. There are plenty of cases where Power BI supersedes SSRS with simplicity but of course there are drawbacks. Drawbacks such as DAX and MDX which would can get pretty messy. The ability to get very specific in SSRS is much more kind than how one would achieve the same result from Power BI. After 10 DAX/MDX formulas, do you really want a sql developer to say ops and update the column name? Yes, I've been there and I still go to therapy every Tuesday afternoon.

On the less joking side, every tool has it's strong suites. One very positive thing to mention about Power BI is the scope of data sources it carries under it's belt. It's friends with everyone, it even had dinner with Will Smith the other day. Ok I'm of course joking but I'm only speaking on this because we haven't gotten as much connections with SSRS. So we can rest easy if you're wanting to make a decision based on the ease of connecting to something. Even though there are ways to connect a data source using SSRS, it isn't as graceful as Power BI.

Last point I'd like to make is the fact that portal is very simple and easy to use. If you've been staring at SSRS's portal then you would feel at home. One key difference I'd like to call out is the subscription portion which is a tad different because in SSRS you get the file in an email but Power BI you get a picture with a link instead. That's all folks.