Power BI vs Javascript Charts vs Premium Charts
Tomasz Dobrowolski
![Tomasz Dobrowolski]()
Tomasz Dobrowolski
hftedge.com | Contracted until Nov | B2B | Azure Specialist | Tech lead | .Net full stack | JavaScript | Consulting
After few weeks working and playing with power bi and embedding it into the website and seeing how it works in practice I would like to give my feedback on it. I'll be concise and will just try to give general pros and cons of each technology. In the end is business decision on what you want to use in your organization
Power BI
Pros:
- Powerful out of the box. Charts have drilldown and are interactive without any programming involved
- Non technical people can help designing the charts
- Connects directly to the database ( no need for additional layers)
Cons:
- Limited by the api
- Hard to program against
- Requires azure admins to intervene with permissions and setup
- Simple customizations are hard to accomplish and might require workarounds/be not possible at all
- Requires Power Bi Pro per viewer or Premium per author
- Charts are embedded in iframe, limiting dev control over the way it looks
- Power Bi is customer tool, it’s not really designed to be embedded in the website other than as a bonus it seems
Open source javascript charts:
Pros:
- Lots of different charts to choose from
- Free
- Powerful customizations
- Easy to program against
- Popular
- Lots of experienced people working with it
- Full freedom over how it looks and behaves
- If workaround is needed you might just go for different chart
- Good for creating non-standard designs
Cons:
- Open source might mean lack of support
- Slower to develop charting than drag and drop in power bi
- Needs complex backend so it’s scalable
- Needs layer over database to prepare the data for the chart
Other premium charting systems:
- Good support
- Rich and nice looking charts/controls
- Powerful when right supplier is selected
- Easy to use if designs are within out of the box capabilities
- Designed to work well and bug free as it’s premium product
- Fast to program against if the design doesn’t deviate from standard functionality and once the backend is created
Cons:
- Limited to what controls allow
- Workarounds might be needed often
- Needs layer over database to prepare the data for the chart
Senior Technical Architect | Cloud Architect Cloud Migration I Microservices I Web Application Architect
1 年This is really helpful analysis to make correct decision.
Application Developer III at Team D3 - The Leader in Autodesk Integrations
1 年This is awesome! I have a section of my platform that is currently using an embedded report from powerBI. It was straightforward to set up and implement but now I’m finding myself wanting more control over the graphics and user interface. Have you noticed any difference in responsiveness between embedded and rendering through JS? My tables have hundreds of thousands if not millions of rows. (Essentially a log table)