Self-service Reporting: Replacing ReportBuilder and Report Models (SMDL) in SSRS 2008 with SSAS Tabular Models or Power BI-datasets and Power BI Report Builder, experiences?

Question

We offer a SAAS Self-service Reporting solution to our customers, that uses ReportBuilder and Report Models (SMDL) in SQL Reporting Services SSRS 2008, and we want to modernize it, mainly because SMDL is deprecated (already some time now). We are thinking to replace SMDL by SSAS Tabular Models or Power BI-datasets for the back-end and for the front-end we'd use Power BI Report Builder (to make RDL-files, so not PBIX (Power BI Desktop)-files).
Does someone has done the same, and what was your experience, how much work is it, especially to migrate the customer-made ('ad-hoc') reports, of which we have thousands..
I also saw a similar question here:

https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/34848773-f281-42d8-ba85-a20e7d272e98/what-is-alternate-of-report-modelsmdl-in-sql-server-2016-and-how-to-migrate-smdl-reports-to-sql?forum=sqlanalysisservices

but that was of 2018 and now, 4 years later, I think their is some experience with this 'migration from SMDL to Tabular Models' and I'm interested to hear about that.

Answer 1

Hi @Maarten van Reek

Here is an article about how to use SSAS tabular model creating report，you can take a reference：https://www.sqlshack.com/create-simple-ssrs-report-using-ssas-tabular-model-database/

Sorry that I am not familiar with SSAS or Power BI ，if you have any questions about SSAS or Power BI ，you can ask on SSAS forum and Power BI forum，
Thanks for your understanding .

Best Regards,
Isabella

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