Microsoft Power BI vs React

In operations we use the tool for many different topics, from factory quality systems to high level reviews. We have created kind of an internal "App Store" based on Power BI where you have a lot of different dashboards for different solutions (cost, cash, health and safety, sales, factories, distribution centers...) and you as an user just need to get in that "App Store" and enter in whatever tool can be useful for you. It is open to all the operations employees and can use on demand. Also it has raised the imagination of our colleagues, as they are not only working by themselves creating new reports, but also raising fantastic ideas that can be extended for the usage of all the community.

React is great for people who are trying to build complex single page web applications. It is intuitive for developers, encourages modularity through components, and provides a web app this will scale. React may not be suited as well for simple websites or static content. However, this is changing with frameworks like Gatsby which allow you to build static HTML websites using React.

• Quickly filter and view granular data sets with easily configurable reporting figures.
• The ability to quickly switch between tabs allows for historical data comparisons and progress tracking.
• It's helpful to dive into the data and break it down from high levels to small.
• Achieve actionable insights faster by using real-time data. It's incredible to have online access to reports.

• React is designed around the notion of generated html as opposed to templated html. This provides more flexibility in building elements on a page, and allows developers to create html that is programmatically configured based on runtime considerations.
• React uses JSX, which is HTML templating integrated into javascript code. This simplifies the generation of complex structures, especially those that vary based on runtime and interactive data.
• React is more efficient because it generates a virtual DOM rather than directly building in in the actual DOM. By building 'offline' in this manner, the DOM generation is faster. After building, it can be installed in one operation.
• React only builds those portions of the display that have changed, making display updates more efficient.

• The desktop app is great but needs a lot of performance improvements
• No MacOS Version for the Desktop app, this is a big limitation for business since executives prefer Macs
• Premium Cloud Version of Power BI is awfully expensive
• On-Premise Version of the Power BI Reports Server is bundled only with SQL Server Enterprise License and cannot be purchased separately and requires Software Assurance Subscription
• On-Premise Power BI Report Server doesn't support ADFS, AzureAD or any Claims-Based authentication platform, a sad disadvantage for enterprises

• React could get very frustrating unless you start thinking in React. React enforces a top down hierarchy of data flow and offers no way for the data to communicate backwards. This is a big shift in mindset coming from Angular 1.x. This constraint is really a big factor that determines how to organize your code and how you might want to write your own Components.
• Because of the self imposed top down hierarchy, you end up having a heavy parents with dumb children. Because parents would need to the bulk of the work, they usually manage the state, while passing callbacks to the child components. If not properly designed, this could lead to the callback hell, where you could have callbacks passing through like multiple children.
• As with any library, you will have to iterate through multiple designs to come up with a ways to avoid "heavy parent components" in React. One obvious solution is using some open source tools like Redux, but we opted for a variation of it to suit our needs.

I find it helpful and easy to use

At this point, I think we all know who has taken the lead in the business intelligence and analytics market worldwide. With fresh new updates every other day on top of an already robustly built product with all features that one can dream of is a no brainer, I feel. Microsoft will invariably be synonymous with quality and professionalism.

React is just a bit of a different animal. I was avoiding it for the longest time. I thought for sure I would land on Vue or something else with a more approachable and familiar appearance. But after taking an online course in React, I started realize what people were raving about (and complaining about) and decided to implement it at our office for one of our products.

I can't really speak to the support overall, [but] I will say that in the almost three years I have used the system, I have only needed to contact their support team once. I think the team was helpful, but it did take some time for us to resolve the issues/ request that they had. I guess the good news is that the system is pretty stable, and I personally have rarely needed to contact their technical support team.

Since it's open-source and very popular, the community support for React and related tools and libraries is excellent. There are a lot of people using the same tools, and so issues tend to get fixed quickly and "recipes" are easy to come by. And since it's backed by Facebook, they have a dedicated engineering team working on the progression of React.

[Microsoft] Power BI is practical and effective, like a hammer for a nail, it is easy to use and produces very quickly the results that in most cases are urgently required by clients (nice reports to share on the web). To start using [Microsoft] Power BI you need a business email address, with that you create an account in Power BI Service and in less than 1 hour you will have installed Power BI Desktop, a report will have been created and it will have been published on the web .

I have also used Angular before coming to React. Web apps created with React are much faster than Angular because React is based on virtual DOM which reloads only those components of the web page that change and everything else remains the same. Angular's learning curve is also slightly steeper than React.

• It helps us track and achieve company goals.
• It shows us [our] performance in areas we could not previously track and allows us to see and work on how to improve their performance.
• Quick easy access for executives to use in helping teams and addressing issues.

• React allows a modular design, which is fabulous for A/B testing (showing a different module to each user). Some of these experiments had an improvement as big as to pay for the whole team that coded it. So far we know the ROI has been positive, but I can't provide a number.