All posts by Tiwari Ashish

Is MicroStategy BI implementation recession proof


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MicroStrategy Inc

This question I had all the time I’ve been working on MicroStrategy, but with an exception that I had not seen recession.

Prima facie, the answer is Big NO. Most of my friends, who are working on different clients in varied domain, are not working on any important projects or not working at all (including me). All of a sudden the clients have deferred further implementation of MicroStrategy project(s). Around 14 friends of mine have changed job in last 6 months and none of them is actually working on a MicroStrategy project, so one can easily imagine the situation in developed countries, mainly USA.

TARP is yet to come into picture. Scene is going to be same for next 2 months, the time taken for TARP to show effect.

This time clients are simply trying to optimize the current BI not trying any new BI implementation. Few MicroStrategy or other core BI vendors are moving/thing to Open source BI.

MicroStrategy commands a loyal customer base but repeat business or sale of Orion will be something hard to see in near future.

Cease and Desist Letter received from MicroStrategy, Inc


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MicroStrategy Inc

I’ve just received a Cease & Desist letter for having registering domain names “microstrategy.co.in” and “microstrategy.in”. The reason behind this is

1. Using companies trademark, illegally.
2. Domain names made in bad faith since you are not using domain names for any legitimate purpose.
3. abusive registration of domain names

Pretty much pissed off against MicroStrategy, Inc as I love the company for which I’ve worked (though outsourcer) and I receive this kind of letter.

microstrategy.in directs to microstrategy.co.in which is a MicroSteategy forum.

Can’t comment legally, but I do not use anything that can be trademark violation. Site is fully operational and happening so nothing can be bad taste and I need to know what’s an abusive registration of domain name.

If you have any legal/para-legal advice to let me know.

If they would have had asked politely or tried to contact though common acquaintances, I would have had given to them. But this D&C is torturous. Nothing is illegal on site or site itself is not illegal. I would contest the domain name ownership in Indian court under Indian IT Act 2000.
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Update 9th Feb 6:30 pm IST

Indian IT Act 2000 doesn’t define anything like cybersquatter. Such case can be only fought in court of law or can be settled by Arbitrator of .IN Registry (which still can be challenged in court, extremely tedious and slow process).

One can check the list of domain that were awarded to the Complainant here. I’ve been though most of them and found that the Registrars were indeed cybersqatters and it was pretty easy for rightful owners to get back the domain (this includes monster.in, pizzahut.in, sonyericsson.co.in, gmail.co.in, morganstanley.in, youtube.in, kfc.co.in, franklintempleton.in).

If one reads the case document on the link above, one would come to know that there were people who had simply parked the domain or had opened shell/ad site not hosting anything actually. But I have a strong case and I would be fighting tooth and nail for the hard work I’ve done in setting up the forum and bringing some good people knowing MicroStrategy.

Multiple Intelligent Server on single machine


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I-Server, MicroStrategy

A common question asked (and twisted) and newbie are trapped if answered incorrect. :-)

Answer is Yes in case of All UNIX/Linux (AIX, Solaris, UX, RH Linux, SUSE Linux) and NO for Windows.

One thing to be taken care of. Can’t run both servers on same port number. :-)

MicroStrategy 9.0 release


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MicroStrategy 9

MicroStrategy 9.0 codenamed Orion will go GA by Q1 2009, which is still like 3-4 months behind schedule. It is too good as far as some stupid bug fixes that I wanted for long time and some dashboard stuff.

My suggestion – If you are non-English user wait till 9.0 SP1 to be released, or at least HF1. You will not regret your decision.

Report Service Documents


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Metadata, MicroStrategy

Every time we rename an object, MicroStrategy updates that object’s name in all of its dependants. That’s true, right?… Or is it?
Well, it’s almost true. This fails when the object whose name we change is referenced as a data field in a Document.

Tip. A data field is a text field that is created either by dragging it from the Dataset Objects area into the Layout area, or by creating it manually and then typing the object’s name. The name should appear between braces ({}) and should be also surrounded by brackets ([]) if it contains spaces or special characters.

Now, because the data field does not have an object ID, MicroStrategy is completely oblivious if the object referenced in it is renamed, thus the document will not run. Strangely enough, it performs fine if the object was moved to a different folder.

The way to avoid such mishaps is to do a dependence check when renaming a Metric or Attribute and see if they are being used as data fields inside a Document. All it takes then is typing the new name into the text box.

Of course, if the object is used in the Document as part of a grid, then the Metadata does its job very well.

Update: This issue is fixed in version 9.