Since we had two training sessions for Power BI last week, I thought it would be good to summarize my first thoughts and compare them with Tableau in this article.
Power BI (PBI) is a cloud-based business analytics service that allows anyone to view data provided by Microsoft since 2013. It is included in Office 365 and Microsoft encourages the use of PBI for viewing data from other cloud services. It aims to offer interactive visualizations and business intelligence capabilities with an interface simple enough for end users to create reports and dashboards.
Tableau is also a data visualization tool, but it has been around since 2003 and is more popular and widely used. This tool also helps us convert raw data into meaningful insights and provide beautiful dashboards for our data.
So what are the differences between these tools?
· Power BI can only handle a limited amount of data, whereas Tableau can handle a massive amount of data with better performance.
· Power BI connects to a limited number of data sources, whereas Tableau can connect to a large number of data sources.
· Tableau uses MDX (Multidimensional Expressions) to implement measures and dimensions, whereas Power Bi uses DAX (Data Analysis Expressions) to calculate and measure columns.
· Tableau can be difficult to learn, whereas the PBI interface is simple, especially for those accustomed to Microsoft’s products.
· Tableau is expensive compared to other tools. Due to its high costs, Tableau is suitable for medium or large organizations, that can afford the licensing fees, while PBI is suited for small organizations too.
· Power BI offers limited assistance to its users with a free Power BI account. However, users of the paid version will receive faster support. On the other hand, Tableau has an excellent customer support and a great community forum for discussions.
In the end, both tools have their own pros and cons. The choice between Tableau and PBI is personal, based on your own needs and tastes.