When to use Azure Analysis Service vs Azure Synaptic Analysis

Question

As I understand:
Azure Analysis Service is upgraded version of SQL server Analysis Service on the cloud.
Azure Synapse Analytic is upgraded version SQL DW + ML +Power BI that intergrates with ADLS + Data Bricks.

So it seems lik both have a significant overlap. If so why would I ever use a pipeline like this?
It sems Azure Synapse Analytics can do OLAP just as well. Why would would someone design a pipeline this way?

Answer 1

Hey,
Though both Azure synapse and Azure analysis services are olap system, there are multiple reasons why we still need AAS as below:

1. SQL dw being a mpp architecture,there is a restriction of concurrent users in SQL dw but not in Azure analysis services. So in case if there are reports with 500 users accessing simultaneously , in case of SQL dw there would be some queue involved for some users but this won't be the case for Aas.
2. there are multiple features in aas which helps in analytics easily like dax rather than having everything done in SQL ( which sometimes becomes difficult and that too at SQL dw where many normal tsql functions are not supported)

Though msft is gradually moving AAS towards powerbi premium model but we do need a model similar to aas rather than directly SQL dw for some better performance .