Power BI Desktop is the development tool available to data analysts and other report creators.
While the Power BI service allows you to organize, manage, and distribute your reports and other Power BI items. Power BI Desktop is available to download for free either through the Windows store or directly online.
The flow of Power BI is:
- Connect to data with Power BI Desktop.
- Transform and model data with Power BI Desktop.
- Create visualizations and reports with Power BI Desktop.
- Publish report to Power BI service.
- Distribute and manage reports in the Power BI service.
report have pages/ tabs/ bookmarks that hide and show visuals like an web-application.
dashboard can be formed using visual from multiple reports as tiles. clicking tiles would lead to the report and not cross filter (unlike possible inside individual reports.)
pbi content hierarchy
everything is contained inside a workspace, within workspace one can create app that is composed of report and dashboards. The end user should only access contents via apps and not through workspace access directly.
https://www.reddit.com/r/PowerBI/comments/183bsmx/what_is_the_difference_between_creating_a/
https://www.reddit.com/r/PowerBI/comments/1b91f1h/what_is_the_appropriate_use_cases_for_reports_vs/