Primary purpose

Traditional structured reporting (pre-defined queries and drill paths)

Traditional structured reporting (pre-defined queries and drill paths)

Data discovery / interactive exploration

Architectural mode

Standalone (supports Excel file sources only)

or

Datazen Server (opens up many more data sources, sharing, mobile delivery, refreshing, use of live tiles, use of KPIs)

Native Mode

or

SharePoint Mode

Power View for Excel

or

Power BI Designer

or

Power View for SharePoint

Both Excel and Power BI Design can be used standalone or in conjunction with the Power BI portal (SaaS cloud app)

Installation components

Server: Datazen Server (core service repository is built on RavenDB)

Client: Datazen Publisher (available in Windows store)

Mobile viewer apps: Available for iOS 7+,

Android 4.1+,

Win8+,

Win Phone 7.1+

Native Mode: Report Manager with ReportServer

SharePoint Mode: SharePoint with ReportServer

Client: Visual Studio with SSDT or BIDS

and/or

Report Builder (click-once app)

Power View for Excel (enabled in Excel)

or

Power BI Designer (standalone download)

or

Power View for SharePoint (part of SSRS in SharePoint)

Delivery approach

On-premises (or IaaS)

On-premises (or IaaS)

Hybrid (full functionality)

or

On-premises (subset of functionality)

Access types

Native mobile apps (calls REST APIs)

or

Web browser viewer (HTML5)

or

Mobile device chrome shell

or

Embedding in a custom application

Report Manager web app (Native mode)

or

SharePoint

Excel (client)

or

SharePoint

or

Power BI portal (SaaS cloud app)

Mobile delivery capabilities

Native apps:

iOS,

Android,

Windows

+ HTML5 in browser

No native apps

Partial support across mobile devices and browsers (requires SQL Server 2012 SP1+)

Native apps:

iOS,

Windows,

Android

+ HTML5 in browser

(Excel and SharePoint still based on Silverlight)

Organization of content

Hub in the Datazen Enterprise Server

Native mode: folders in Report Manager

SharePoint mode: sites, document libraries, folders in SharePoint

Structuring content across functional areas and/or user groups is not yet released in Power BI v2

Support for anonymous users (public)

Yes (guest account)

Yes (custom authentication)

Not yet

Support for row-level security

Yes (personalized data views)

Yes (if data source is using Windows authentication; not applicable to subscriptions which require ID/PW to be specified)

Yes (only if using SSAS Tabular data source in Power BI v2 which passes EffectiveUserName)

Design approach

Design-First (layout with simulated data to refine design before associating layout elements to data views)

or

If preferred, Data-First

Data-First (report connects to an embedded or shared dataset query)

Data-First (report connects to an existing model or data source)

Development environment

Dashboards: Datazen Publisher (a Win 8+ app also known as Datazen Designer)

KPIs, Data Connections & Data Views: Control Panel (web app)

Report Designer (Visual Studio/SSDT/BIDS)

or

Report Builder (click-once app)

Power BI Designer

or

Power View for Excel

or

Power View for SharePoint (web)

Typical content creator

Dashboards:

IT developer

or

Power user

Data Connections & Data Views: IT developer

or

Proficient power user (need to be able to write SQL, MDX, or DAX queries as there’s no drag & drop UI)

IT developer

or

Proficient power user

Data analyst (created purposely to have a minimal learning curve)

Creation of underlying report query

Need to write query which is contained within a data view (need to write syntax)

Need to create query which is contained within a dataset (can write syntax or use a UI)

Drag and drop (cannot write specific underlying query)

Designer

‘Snap to Grid’ system (ex: 5 rows x 6 columns)

3 layouts: Master, Tablet, and Phone

Free-form layout (with precise alignment ability in body, header, and footer)

Free-form layout (without precise alignment ability)

File extension

.datazen

.RDL

.XLSX (Excel)

or

.PBIX (Power BI Designer)

or

.RDLX (Power View for SharePoint)

Parameterization

3 types:

Time navigator,

Scorecard grid,

Selection list or tree

Parameter pane

Slicers (placed on the report body)

or

Filters pane (page level or for individual table/chart)

Color palette

Style selections applicable to entire dashboard

A custom color palette can be defined using configuration files if desired

Standard color selections for individual charts

Can customize colors using custom color palettes, expressions, or custom code

Style selections applicable to entire report

Pixel-perfect formatting control

No

Yes

No

Switch chart types on the fly

No

No (potential workaround with parameterization and show/hide properties)

Yes

Interactive cross-filtering and highlighting behavior

No

No

Yes

Calculations and expressions

Straightforward options (Sum, Avg, Count, Min, Max, First, Last)

Many options within the dataset, expressions, and custom code

Straightforward options (Sum, Avg, Min, Max, Count)

Built-in maps

Bubble map,

Gradient heat map,

Range stop heat map,

Custom ESRI shapefile

Bubble map,

Filled map,

Line map,

Marker map,

Custom ESRI shapefile

Bubble map,

Filled map

Uses Bing Maps API

Multiple data sources allowed per individual report / dashboard

Yes (needs a join key in some cases)

Yes (one data source per dataset is general rule, though a tablix expression can reference another dataset and/or lookups can be utilized)

No (workaround is to integrate data first in underlying data model)

Shared datasets (i.e., reusable queries across multiple reports / dashboards)

Yes (data views on the server can be shared within the scope of a hub)

Yes (embedded dataset can be promoted to be a shared dataset)

Yes (In V2, datasets published to the Power BI service are independent objects from reports and dashboards

Shared report elements (i.e., reusable charts and tables across multiple reports / dashboards)

Report elements: Not shareable across multiple master views or multiple dashboards (tablet and phone views utilize some or all elements from a single master view)

KPIs:  KPIs are independent of dashboard elements; a KPI can drill to a related dashboard

Yes (report parts which are elements such as tables, charts, gauges, images, maps, parameters, etc. published for reuse)

Yes (Power BI v2 portal  supports the ability to ‘pin’ a report element onto one or more dashboards after the report has been published to the Power BI site)

KPI repository

Yes (defined in the Control Panel web app)

Indirectly (a KPI can be used from the underlying SSAS or Power Pivot data model, or an indicator can be defined inside of an individual report)

Indirectly (a KPI can be referenced from the underlying SSAS or Power Pivot data model)

Drill-down (additional detail on the same report)

No

Yes

Yes (basic; affects single object on page only)

Drill-through (additional detail on a different report)

To another dashboard

or

To custom URL (incl to other reporting tools such as SSRS or Power View for SharePoint)

Requires the dashboard to be published & not in standalone mode

To another report

or

To custom URL (incl to other reporting tools)

Custom URL (only on Dashboard tiles)

Alerts

No

Yes (data-driven alerts in SharePoint mode only)

Yes (simple high/low alerting on a single numeric tile - available in v2 mobile app only)

Subscriptions / automated report delivery

No

Yes

(E-mail,

file share,

SharePoint doc library,

preload a cache)

No

Snapshot reporting

No

Yes (report execution snapshot to improve performance, or report history snapshot to store report as of a point in time)

No (even a Power Point export from SharePoint retains a live connection so it’s not an ideal tool for a point-in-time snapshot)

Pinning of report elements

KPIs can be pinned to Windows 8 start page as a live tile

Dashboards can be pinned to Windows 8 start page as a shortcut to open dashboard

No

Yes (in Power BI v2 portal, an item on a report can be pinned to one or more dashboard pages)

Support for Analysis Services Multidimensional

Yes (requires a flattened MDX query to be provided; Datazen ignores items on the rows-workaround can be calculated members for display of attributes or use of DIMENSION PROPERTIES MEMBER_CAPTION)

Yes (requires a flattened dataset with only two axes)

Yes if data brought into embedded model first (i.e., not direct connect in Power BI V2). Live connectivity supported in Power View for SharePoint

Support for Analysis Services Tabular

Yes (requires a DAX query to be provided)

Yes

Yes

URL-based report launching

Yes

Yes

Yes (if published to SharePoint or to the Power BI portal)

Embedded BI in a custom app

Yes

Yes

Not yet

Embedded in SharePoint

Yes

Yes

Yes (if using Power View for SharePoint)

System administration

Datazen Server Control Panel (web-based)

Report Server,

Report Manager,

SharePoint

N/A for now

Server-side caching

Cached data views (vs. real-time data views) can be created on a schedule

Dashboard thumbnails and definitions cached

A shared cache service, such as Azure Cache, can be employed

Reports can be cached on a schedule to improve performance of longer-running reports

Caching in place for continued display of dashboard tiles (thumbnails) in Power BI portal (refreshed automatically every ~15 minutes)

Mobile app caching

Offline mobile access of dashboard with background sync at specified intervals (an alternative to real-time which does not cache locally)

N/A

Data saved in the app cache for offline mobile access

Redundant storage of data along with report itself

No (if using a data source from the Enterprise Server)

Yes (stores copy of data if running in standalone mode & Excel is the data source, this data is imported & stored in the report definition)

No

No (if utilizing Power View in conjunction with supported direct-connection sources)

Yes (stores copy of data if utilizing Power View in conjunction with an embedded Excel data model in the same file)

Execution logging (reports executed by whom, run times, etc)

Not built-in (workaround is to build a custom activity tracking table)

Yes (report server DB execution logs)

Not available

Scale-out

Yes (most of the Enterprise Server services can be distributed)

Yes (multiple distributed report server instances with a single report server DB)

No