We performed a comparison between Databricks and Microsoft BI based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Databricks is the winner in this comparison. It is robust, high performing, and received good feedback for its speed.
"I like that Databricks is a unified platform that lets you do streaming and batch processing in the same place. You can do analytics, too. They have added something called Databricks SQL Analytics, allowing users to connect to the data lake to perform analytics. Databricks also will enable you to share your data securely. It integrates with your reporting system as well."
"I haven't heard about any major stability issues. At this time I feel like it's stable."
"It is fast, it's scalable, and it does the job it needs to do."
"Databricks is a scalable solution. It is the largest advantage of the solution."
"We like that this solution can handle a wide variety and velocity of data engineering, either in batch mode or real-time."
"The ability to stream data and the windowing feature are valuable."
"The most valuable feature is the Spark cluster which is very fast for heavy loads, big data processing and Pi Spark."
"The technical support is good."
"It ingegrates nicely with Office 365."
"Microsoft BI was very helpful for me because I had a huge variety of connections. It is very convenient to build reports, even if somebody has no experience using BI tools or data visualizations. Additionally, the performance is very good when generating reports."
"The interface is very easy to use."
"The solution is easy to use and charts can be built quickly with the tools."
"My primary use is for view of the dashboard."
"The scalability overall has been quite good."
"The virtualization of Microsoft BI is very good."
"I liked that Microsoft Power BI handles a large amount of data. I can handle hundreds of rows from Postgres in a few minutes. I also like how it detects the relationship between the tables without explicitly saying that. It just detects the relationship automatically. That made it easier to work with the data."
"Databricks is not geared towards the end-user, but rather it is for data engineers or data scientists."
"I believe that this product could be improved by becoming more user-friendly."
"The integration and query capabilities can be improved."
"The product should incorporate more learning aspects. It needs to have a free trial version that the team can practice."
"In the next release, I would like to see more optimization features."
"There could be more support for automated machine learning in the database. I would like to see more ways to do analysis so that the reporting is more understandable."
"I have had some issues with some of the Spark clusters running on Databricks, where the Spark runtime and clusters go up and down, which is an area for improvement."
"The data visualization for this solution could be improved. They have started to roll out a data visualization tool inside Databricks but it is in the early stages. It's not comparable to a solution like Power BI, Luca, or Tableau."
"It would be better if they had some video tutorials. Most people from an Excel background may struggle with measures in Microsoft BI."
"Anything they can do to improve enterprise collaboration is going to help people get set up and utilize the solution."
"The UI is the main improvement that could be made. Specifically, there is something called DAX, in Power BI, which is complicated compared to calculated fields used in Tableau."
"Real-time updating needs improvement."
"The graphic interface could be better."
"Creating dashboards could be easier."
"It would be nice to use other connectors to link with the data."
"Its performance and stability can be improved. It takes time to load, and sometimes, it also breaks down for the whole region. Its usability could also be better, and it could also have more connections with different data sources."
Databricks is ranked 1st in Data Science Platforms with 78 reviews while Microsoft Power BI is ranked 1st in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools with 297 reviews. Databricks is rated 8.2, while Microsoft Power BI is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of Databricks writes "A nice interface with good features for turning off clusters to save on computing". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Microsoft Power BI writes "A complete ecosystem with an builtin ETL tool, good integrations with python and R, and support of DAX and Power Query (M languages)". Databricks is most compared with Amazon SageMaker, Informatica PowerCenter, Dataiku Data Science Studio, Microsoft Azure Machine Learning Studio and Alteryx, whereas Microsoft Power BI is most compared with Tableau, Amazon QuickSight, KNIME, Domo and SAS Visual Analytics.
We monitor all Data Science Platforms reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.