Connection options to Azure Analysis Services vs Power BI vs Power BI embedded vs Power BI Premium

Question

I'm looking for option to connect to and query the "Model"/Database of Azure Analysis Services(AAS)/Power BI. I've found multiple options for connecting AAS to .Net Core, but nothing for Power BI. Can I use any of the following connection types to connect to Power BI? And if so which flavor? Power BI Pro, Power BI Premium, Power BI Embedded?

I can connect to Azure Analysis Services using the following:

• ADOMD <- This is my preferred connection method.
• AMO
• MSOLAP
• REST API with Bearer token

I'm not looking to embed my report in a .Net Core application. I'm looking to actually query different models so everyone is reporting off the same data.

I don't want to shell out for AAS if I can do this with Power BI Pro!

Answer 1

As a short answer, I would say you can most likely do what you are asking with data sets hosted within a Power BI Premium instance or by users with a Premium per user (PPU) license.

My reasoning is simple. Access to the XMLA endpoint is only available for datasets hosted within Power BI Premium. Microsoft describes that in a bit more detail here within the Power BI documentation. Power BI Embedded (in a round about way) also ends up requiring Power BI Premium, so I believe this would be the same case for Power BI Embedded.

As a reminder on why the XMLA endpoint matters, Power BI Premium encapsulates an AAS instance (with some limitations). Per Microsoft (from here):

XMLA is the same communication protocol used by the Microsoft Analysis Services engine, which under the hood, runs Power BI's semantic modeling, governance, lifecycle, and data management.

So XMLA endpoint is required in order to allow connectivity to the AAS instance behind Power BI.

To answer your question regarding the different connection methods:

ADOMD/AMO

Microsoft provides a client library for .NET Framework and .NET Core for both ADOMD and AMO which should be able to connect to the XMLA endpoint of Power BI. You can browse those and the information available from Microsoft on those here. There are several open-source tools out there (recommended by Microsoft) that make use of these libraries. So if you are looking for examples, look in to Tabular Editor 2 or DAX Studio.

MSOLAP

Per Microsoft (in same link about client libraries):

Analysis Services OLE DB Provider (MSOLAP) is the native client library for Analysis Services database connections. It's used indirectly by both ADOMD.NET and AMO, delegating connection requests to the data provider. You can also call the OLE DB Provider directly from application code.

So unless you have some very specific needs regarding MSOLAP, I would probably rely on the Microsoft's AMO/ADOMD client libraries.

REST API

Assuming we are talking about the actual Power BI REST API (like this link) then, it depends. There are certain functionalities that the API exposes that might have been your use case for wanting to use a direct connection to the XMLA endpoint. For example, it does allow you to execute DAX queries or initiate dataset refreshes (all with its limitations). So I would advise you to review the API's documentation. It seems to be a good tool so far, and my guess is that it will only expand.