Power BI Desktop is a free application that you download and install on your local computer. Desktop is a complete data analysis and report creation tool that is used to connect to, transform, visualize, and analyze your data. It includes the Query Editor, in which you can connect to many different sources of data, and combine them (often called modeling) into a data model. Then you design a report based on that data model. Reports can be shared with others directly or by publishing to the Power BI service. Sharing reports requires a Power BI Pro license. The Power BI Desktop getting started guide walks through the process. The Power BI service is a cloud-based service, or software as a service (SaaS). It supports report editing and collaboration for teams and organizations. You can connect to data sources in the Power BI service, too, but modeling is limited. The Power BI service is used to do things such as creating dashboards, creating...
Power BI is a collection of software services, apps, and connectors that work together to help you create, share, and consume business insights in the way that serves you and your business most effectively. The Microsoft Power BI service ( https://app.powerbi.com ) is the Software as a Service (SaaS) part of Power BI. The Power BI service lets you consume and interact with reports, as well as individual visual elements found in those reports, right from your browser. Dashboards in the Power BI service help you keep a finger on the pulse of your business. Dashboards display tiles , which you can select to open reports for exploring further. Dashboards and reports create their interactive visuals based on the semantic models on which they are based, enabling your data to become visuals, and those visuals to be organized into reports to provide you with business intelligence you can act upon. Need help with understanding the building blocks ...