Tableau or Power BI? A Tableau Fan’s Initial Impressions

Intro

Over the last few years, it has been exciting to see how much more accessible data has become in corporate workplaces. Because demand for data has increased, there have been massive developments in the business intelligence space to help analysts tell stories with their company’s data. As shown in this year’s Gartner Magic Quadrant, Tableau and Power BI have distanced themselves from the pack as clear leaders in the BI landscape, and business leaders want to know which tool is the right one for their reporting needs. Having used Tableau daily for about 5 years now on projects of every shape, size and scope imaginable, I am admittedly biased toward it. Tableau is the first piece of business software that completely changed my daily life, and ultimately my career trajectory, so I owe it a huge debt. I’m a certified Tableau fanboy, but I wanted to learn more about their steepest competition. After spending a few months digging into Power BI, I’ve been hugely impressed by the entire platform. Here are my initial reactions:

Comparing BI Platforms Is Like Comparing Smartphones

There is no arguing that these are both fantastic tools. Whenever I try to compare them, I find myself thinking of the iPhone vs Galaxy comparison. In the world of BI platforms, Tableau is the iPhone. Right out of the box, it is a powerful tool with a sleek interface that is easy to pick up and point-&-click your way to a dashboard. Tableau certainly has its limitations, but I have found it to be extremely user-friendly, especially for those who are new to working with data. It’s possible to build a robust dashboard by pointing-&-clicking on visuals and dragging-&-dropping fields into your view with little-to-no coding.  When you do have fields created, Tableau’s calculation syntax is straightforward and the basics are easy to pick up, so I’ve always felt that Tableau’s learning curve is relatively shallow. You are able to go from complete beginner, to intermediate, to advanced, at a pace that I think is a bit faster than most pieces of software I’ve tried.

Sticking with the smartphone metaphor, Power BI is the Galaxy. If you are used to iOS, the first few times you use an Android phone can be frustrating. The layout and functionality are similar but different enough that it throws off your flow, and the things that are second nature to you suddenly don’t work when you try to use the new tool. The same scenario plays out when you try to use Power BI as a Tableau user. Once you familiarize yourself with the different interface’s layout, you’ll be off to the races. Like Tableau, Power BI also offers powerful low-code, point-&-click and drag-&-drop features that allow you to create reports and dashboards very easily. Furthermore, Power BI allows you to create custom visuals and grants access to a visual marketplace directly within the Power BI desktop. This ability to customize means that you are very rarely boxed into any visualization limitations.

The Data Modeling Tools and Formula Languages Are Very Different

The biggest differences I’ve seen between Tableau and Power BI are in the data modeling capabilities and calculation languages. In Power BI, you use Power Query to connect to your data sources and create a data model for your report. You can then create calculated fields using DAX, Microsoft’s calculated field language, to expand upon this data model in just about any way imaginable. I was very happy to learn that Power Query offers incredible data prep capabilities on a wide variety of data connections, allowing you to move from data connection to data model very easily. When working on Tableau projects, I have done most of my data prep outside of Tableau Desktop (using SQL, R, Tableau Prep, etc.) before creating my data model (this might change with the new data modeling capabilities in Tableau’s 2019 releases), so using Power Query to connect to, clean, and model data on the fly was a very refreshing change of pace.

As impressed as I initially was with Power Query, I was even more impressed with DAX. While Tableau has a powerful calculation language of its own, it almost encourages you to find a solution that leverages its other features like table calculations or sets so that you don’t rely upon calculating your way out of a problem. That is not the case with Power BI. You can use DAX to solve just about any problem you have with your dataset from mixed-grain calculations to year-over-year date range comparisons to iterative functions. You can solve these issues in Tableau too, but they often require some combination of Level of Detail calcs, table calcs, and other various workarounds. You can create any calculation you can imagine in DAX, but the language can get complicated very quickly, so be prepared to practice.

Conclusion

I still love Tableau. I still use it almost every day and think it has industry-leading visual capabilities. I also have been massively impressed by Power BI. I think its data modeling capabilities are particularly remarkable and I have been fascinated by how well integrated it is with the rest of the Microsoft Power Platform. I am excited to see the developments in both platforms over the coming years, and I think we will continue to see these platforms be leaders in the BI space for many years to come!