About PowerBI vs Apache SuperSet - crocusllc/Ed-Fi-Educator-Workforce-Analytics-Tool GitHub Wiki

The Educator Workforce dashboards are being made available for both PowerBI and Superset. This page provides a brief overview for implementers needing to decide between the two.

PowerBI vs. Superset

Quick Comparison: Power BI vs. Superset

Feature Microsoft Power BI Apache Superset
Ideal User Business Analysts & Excel Users Data Engineers & Developers
Philosophy "Low-Code" (Drag-and-drop) "Code-First" (SQL-centric)
Data Engine Imports data into memory (Fast for <10GB) Queries database directly (Best for massive data)
Cost Expensive at scale (Per-user licensing) Free (Open Source), but you pay for hosting

1. Microsoft Power BI

The "All-in-One" Enterprise Choice

  • Best For: Teams deep in the Microsoft ecosystem (Excel, Teams) who need to clean messy data without coding.
  • Key Strength: Power Query. It allows non-technical users to fix dirty data (merge sheets, clean rows) before visualizing it.
  • Key Weakness: Cost & Lock-in. You pay per user/month, and moving away from the Microsoft ecosystem later is very difficult.

2. Apache Superset

The "Cloud-Native" Developer Choice

  • Best For: Tech-savvy teams with modern cloud databases (Snowflake, BigQuery) who know SQL.
  • Key Strength: Scalability. Because it queries your database directly rather than importing data, it can visualize Petabytes of data instantly.
  • Key Weakness: Technical Barrier. It has no "data cleaning" tools. Your data must be clean and ready in your database, and users usually need to know SQL.
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