Exploring Microsoft Dynamics AX BI Out of the Box, Part 2: Adding Power BI

Part 1 of our examination of Dynamics AX Reporting Out of the Box focused on what is available to Dynamics AX users natively. Part 2 will focus on a brief chronology of the elements making up the Microsoft's Power BI solutions, including some of the incremental features and its strategic value.

Power BI complements and extends what is already available for Dynamics AX users. For example, products like Management Reporter and SQL Server Reporting Services will continue to be used as will List Pages and Analysis Services.

Building Around Excel...

In 2012, Microsoft introduced a tabular database model in SQL Server Analysis Services. There are pros and cons to using either a tabular or multi-dimensional model for BI, and Microsoft supports both. However, if starting from scratch and considering time-to-value, the tabular database model appears to have significant merit. BI projects focused on multi-dimensional cubes often take months/quarters/years to complete due to the complexity and unique skills required, while using a tabular database model is generally an order of magnitude faster. This topic is introduced to ensure that the modeling step is at least briefly discussed.

Simple, powerful end user tools for BI are of little use without data that is relatively easily modeled, accessible, changeable, and performant. On the last point, performance, tabular databases are loaded into memory, which is good from a performance standpoint but also raises questions regarding server sizing and any data size limitations. See more information on this topic here which also introduces use of Power Pivot: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh212940.aspx

Beginning in 2010 and then again in 2013, Microsoft ...