Tableau VS Power Bi

Power bi versus Tableau let's settle it once and for all we're going to evaluate both tools on five different factors:

•      Visualization
•          Data shaping
•          Data modeling
•          Ecosystem
•          Mystery factor (that may be more important than one to four combined)

Now these are my opinions and I do have extensive experience in the BI industry but if you have a different take leave that in the comment down below and if you're looking to learn power bi make sure to subscribe and click on the bell icon so you don't miss a thing

 

Visualization:

let's start with number one visualization here I think tableau is a clear winner at At least right now the way I see visualization's kind of like the iOS or Apple versus Android there's one the platform which is more of a walled garden more of a curated approach and that if you haven't guessed establish and tableau is a company based on research I believe they were born out of research is done in Stanford or u-dub one of those places and I believe they follow or have been inspired by Stephen few and Edward Tufte both of them I deeply admire so everything in tableau looks slick it's beautiful it works together now power bi don't get me wrong it's tremendous it's amazing what it offers in visualization but it has gone down a the slightly different path so power bi they have opened up the visualization SDK and that means there is a rich library of custom visualizations now again it's kind of a bit like the Apple versus an Android or Apple more curated approach here you have more for open market where a lot of entries there and it could be just a personal preference but I highly prefer the tableau.

 

Data shaping And Data modeling:

let's talk about number two data shaping and number three data modeling I'll talk about them together because they're kind of what's under the hood and if you've heard me talk about this before visualization becomes the easy part if what you have under the hood is super powerful if you have spent the time energy effort there and that's where I spent 80 maybe 90 percent of my time when I'm working with a client building a bi model so you know so that's where the meat is and here I believe power bi has a clear edge so let's look at data shaping that's where power bi offers the query editor and it's really amazing the the tool is so flexible and I love so many features around it one of my favorite things about it are that its self documenting it offers you tons of options in the ribbon itself and if you want to go deeper there are tons to explore inside the M language is really powerful and really easy to use and tableau doesn't quite have anything like that in on its side in fact, I've often heard from tableau users who would admit that they go back and forth between excel and tableau doing the data shaping in Excel using the query editor and then bringing it into tableau on the data modeling side power bi it's is one of those tools which is new but is 20 years old because it was born out of the sequel team within Microsoft, that's where power pivot came along and Dax language on all of that but they have brought that experience that they already had in the cube the model which is essentially a cube technology and that's been around for a long time so Microsoft has had tons of expertise there and they have just brought that to the 21st century brought that in the New Age made it super super accessible and I know it can be challenging to kind of get started with Dax and get to grips with it but it's so much more accessible than the previous the option which was MDX which I can never get right so power bi is really strong when it comes to that model comes to that formula language now tableau does have a little bit of counterpart it does that you define calculations but it's it's not even close when it comes to comparing it to what power bi has to offer under the hood so both in number 2 and number 3 my wind goes to power bi.

 

Ecosystem:

let's talk about number 4 the ecosystem and of course on Microsoft side there is a sure there's SharePoint there's an office 365 there are of course the power apps power flow it's a rich ecosystem and you can argue power bi is the case because of all of that but really the only piece that's near and dear to my heart is Excel and often when people come to me like wow we're kind of thinking about power bi tableau I just asked him a simple question I say forget about that just tell me how many years of Excel experience do you have and they say I have 15 years and I say ok fine what about the total experience Excel experience on your the whole team and they say well maybe a a century or two right so I often work with the business users and I love power bi because there are so many scenarios when it works with Excel it doesn't try to push it away or read Excel is an amazing tool and when combined with Barbie I that's when they can really give you the strength and the agility so that I believe just for that reason power bi gets my world.

 

Mystery factor:

number five or mystery factoring as I said perhaps this is more important than one and for all combined and number five is really that guys, there's no vs. there's no kind of competition really between these tools at least the way I see it I mean these two both are great tools in the marketplace and we're all better off for because both of them are there and I again I'll use that Apple versus Samsung now so here tableau and power bi if you realize one is kind of inspired by the other I mean tableau came on and brought this new beautiful bi tool to the market and I would definitely say Microsoft was kind of inspired by that and so yeah I mean power bi owes its existence in some sense to tableau and if you look at it from the customers perspective we're glad to have both tools there because we know that by having both of these companies we know that both of these companies are gonna keep pushing innovation and keep trying to you know kind of push the envelope and that of course, you know is great for the customer but lastly again I want you to realize that it's not a were says it's not an either/or choice in fact what I would typically recommend is that you build your model using power bi just because power bi is so strong in that the area right so you do the clean shape transform using the power bi or the rest of the Microsoft ecosystem and you build the data model they're using Dax using the all the formal language and all those capabilities but then you're free to choose to visualize tool of your choice you can use power bi reports and dashboards but you can also create Excel reports if you wanted to, you could also connect to a blow to a power bi model now right now not all scenarios are enabled easily but there are certainly scenarios for example a sure analysis services SSA establish what you can have easily a tableau visualization connect back to your power bi model so I really hope that these companies Microsoft and tableau they work together to make that more seamless because again there's no either/or once you have your model you can use the visualization tool of your the choice now that's my take on power bi vs. tableau, so I hope you like it and stay connected.

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