Choosing an R engine to install

Once you have decided on the R distribution to install, the first question when installing an R engine is: "Which version should I install? Do I choose the latest one, or do I opt for a previous one?" The usual answer to these kinds of questions is: "It depends!". In our case, the goal is to use the R engine within Power BI, so we need to understand which versions are used by the different products that admit the use of R within them.

The R engines used by Power BI

We saw in Chapter 1, Where and How to Use R and Python Scripts in Power BI, that only two Power BI products are allowed to use scripts in R and Python: Power BI Desktop and the Power BI service (remember that Power BI Embedded is implicitly included when talking about the Power BI service). So, the answer "It depends!" takes on a clearer connotation now: if you need to share your reports with people inside your organization, then you have to install the...