All posts by Tiwari Ashish

MicroStrategy Mobile is launched in India

MicroStrategy Inc

I reached Hotel Lalit, the Intercontinental by 8:45 AM after having started some ETL jobs in office, a stone’s throw away. MicroStrategy Mobile launch was happening in a hall which was two levels underground. As I reached for registration stall, I was greeted by helpful staff who promptly handover me an ID batch (pre-printed). Pre-registration was not really required as my colleague told me that there were some people who registered on spot. Think so, as there were lots of extra chair arranged in the back of hall.

The Introduction was done by Mr. Shantanu Shrivastav. He was very short and finished in just 2 minutes even though he had 15 minutes slot. BTW, schedule was changed at 11th hour. More on that on later. After this there wsas an recorded demo of MicroStrategy on Apple iPad and iPhone, which would not appeal to Indians at all. I don’t know why they included it. The star presenter (or at least the presenter which had 80% of time), Mr. Pradyut Bafna has terrible voice as a speaker and his voice needed coarsening and habit of saying “aaa….” after every 5 seconds, but worst was he seemed to be totally unconnected with presentation. It cleared looked that he was not aware about the presentation. Also, turning back to presentation was making him goa bit away from mic, which was making is fumble voice even worse. The demo had some scope of Indianized, specially in Google Maps and usage. There are very few Retail customers, but financial reporting examples are that Indian customer would be able to connect. Please don’t give highly radical example like inventory shortage or mystery shopper. I have never ever found any speaker who was lost about what was on the screen. Sadly they had just one screen on Analytical functionality, one of most killing feature of MicroStrategy. Only positive, App integration and sensor integration (in MicroStrategy prompt, obviously) were very exciting. He lacked the enthusiasm of a good and commendable speaker.  One of the screen, Info window surprised him. May be he was not ready. Regarding demo on Blackberry integration, which was pre recorded but w/o sound track, Pradyut must have had mastered it. Most of action came like Easter egg to him. He used words attribute, attribute element which very few business people could have had understand. Hearing nested prompt made me to kill myself.

Projector used was also bad too and fonts looked jarred with small font.

Him saying “No programming needed.” was misleading as I’ve rarely write any code in last 8 years. In fact that’s one of the reason I opted for (MicroStrategy) QA. A Writeback feature is new. What a joke. It was available since v7 days. One could buy it from MicroStrategy by paying a bit extra, or there are third party vendors. If you had time on your side, one could get it developed it in-house. In fact MicroStrategy willfully killed Writeback feature market. (MicroStrategy is actively involved in killing 3rd party market instead of letting in expand.. but don’t want to write about it..)

Sadly there was not a single live demo. No one had an iPad infact in the whole room. They had an MicroStrategy Event app listing various events organized by MicroStrategy across the glove but  failed to show the current event. Should hve had some impact for bosses or high flayers decision makers.

Another claim was about i18 support. Multi lingual support is not really built in. There are changes to be made by client side.

Speaking about Command Manager, Integrity Manager and Cubes was totally unwarranted. First, it was made to be like be default in the license, which is not true and secondly companies can survive and have world-class implementation not having them. Lastly, who could have had understood about them in two minute half hearted demonstration. You must know that you are marketing to people who had never ever seen MicroStrategy (even the gentleman from L&T Infotech, who was last minute replacement for Future Group delegation)

Even though saying that (MicroStrategy has) not having bought any company and strongly believing in organic growth was right, it was wrong to say that MicroStrategy never ever had or not having collaboration with any Data-warehouse. Special collaboration with Teradta and Sybase is world known, not to forget the virtually every Data Warehouse maker is partner of MicroStrategy.

Luckily his finally his boring speech was over and entire room felt revealed.

Something first that support for another Mobile platform is going to be launched soon. Example of high performance and scalability with Ferrari and bus was right on spot for business users.
Calling MicroStrategy a ROLAP was incorrect too, it is HOPAL (please don’t ask me what it is.) Performance slides were truly awesome and must have had denting impact on decision makers. Emphasis on Cube, 64 bit implementation and numerous self certification which their competitor would no dated to, were good. Don’t know why they didn’t quote biggest back-end implementation w/o speaking the name of client.

From presentation I came to know that LinkedIn uses Asterdata. ;). They should have had given free installation DVD/ VMWare image to business user, which installation guide. Came to know about one more new engine to be released soon. (Probably it would be open secret, but don’t wanna name it)

In the schedule sent in email, Future Group was listed as original presenter but backed out at last moment and were replaced by L&T. L&T representative started off with an excellent note but on BI but came down to Marketing of L&T Infoech soon. 95% of slides didn’t connect with MicroStrategy and none had any mention of MicroStrategy mobile. In fact he was not prepared for MicroStrategy portion of slides and didn’t come out to be a good speaker (at least for MicroStrategy feature). He gave info about some two reporting solution created for other L&T companies, like Trax TA and Toll analytic, which were plain reporting and NOT analytics.

I don’t know whay sponsors of event, iCreate and BI retail were not allowed to give a demo. I had attended MicroStrategy 9 launch presentation in the Grand Hyatt two years back and all  three sponsors were given 5 minutes each. iCreate and BI Retail have very zazy, intuitive, simple solution based on MicroStrategy Mobile. At least people could had had soon something in action. I have sympathy with sponsors. Probably they wanted demo (as authorization) a big name client then application maker. :((

It was a good time to catch up with Brajesh, who was my lead during my Cybage days and Jayesh, whome I met for first time (face to face). Lastly met Gautam, who had come to even for official reason. It was immensely satisfying to catch up with all. I fact, I missed opportunity to meet an ex-colleague just because we had never met face to face before.

In nutshell, visitors would remember this event as “at least food as good”. Many people said that with smile. Menu was same what was served in MicroStrategy 9 launch.

In end, I spoke with someone from MicroStrategy for around 20 minutes and shared my opinion (!@#$%^&) about the event. also, I came to know about marketing strategies of MicroStrategy in India and few daring confirmation of mistakes. I have given lots of suggestion to him, hope that they change accordingly.

Last but not least, As MicroStratey called himself in demonstration that it is a Ferrari that can run with a truck load of passenger or a bus that can run like Ferrari speed, like the way you like it. Remember, you need to have provide ample number of good drivers too. Only good number of MicroStrategy professionals would make a game chnager for MicroStrategy in India.

 

(Regarding bad speech by Pradyut, if you can get hands on the recording of the event, which was done, you would find this blog is highly toned down)

MicroStrategy is in India (finally)

MicroStrategy Inc

I had mentioned very soon after MicroStrategy, Inc having setup their office in India. Now I’ve got a confirmation about the traction on this too. MicroStrategy, Inc is working of their own on sales in India. Their strategy is to send the people who want a home coming and there are plenty of guys who wanna come back to motherland. It is going to be very interesting how resellers are going to act on this, as they have regions separated and now they will be competing directly with MicroStrategy India.

MicroStrategy best practices – part 2

MicroStrategy

1. In Dev/UAT, Cache should be disabled server level itself and should not be enabled at any other level.

2. If there is any upgrade of I-Server, Metadata must be updated accordingly.

3. For a fresh setup, Dev should be duplicated into UAT/PROD rather than creating fresh blank MDs in UAT/PROD. If not done, objects won’t be get migrated using OM as both metadata would be having different Schema GUIDs. Schema GUID can be found only using OM.(I have seen some violation of this rule)

4. MD Database backup should be performed on the production environment before changes are made.

5. When a new table is added to the development warehouse and the project’s Warehouse Catalog, a logical table is created. This table can be used as a source table for an existing attribute/fact or a new attribute/ fact. When this object is ready to be transferred to the production environment, the system administrator first need to confirm the existence of the table in the production warehouse. The table should not be added to the production project’s Warehouse Catalog. Doing so will create a new Object ID for a logical table of the same name. The system administrator should use MicroStrategy Administrator – Object Manager to copy the schema object. The logical table from the development project will be copied to the production project as a dependent. If an existing schema object is in the production project, select ‘Replace’ in the Conflict Resolution Dialog.

6. Only one session of MicroStrategy – Object Manager should be open at one time.

7. Object Manager requires the destination project to have the same or newer metadata version than the source project

8. Use Multi-process mode for ODBC connectivity to the warehouse/metadata/statistics for all database/ODBC driver configurations.

9. During initial stages of project development, Attributes should be created with Automatic mapping. May be after 2-3 months, it should be changed to manual. It can be controlled using Options of WH Catalog.

10. If you use local MSTR installation to access client metadata, both must be on same version.

11. Have only one child at the lowest level else report that contains Children will ignore filters of parent(s).

12. There MUST not be any M-to-M relationship between any two attributes. Such a relationship should be broken down using Fact less fact table or a relationship table. PDF describe it in detail.

13. Metadata on OS/390 and Sybase should be avoided as MD Doctor is not certified.

14. Always take a 100% backup of metadata before running ScanMD or MD Doctor. No users should be connected to the project undergoing a fix.

15. Retain a copy of the MDDoctor.log generated by MD Doctor for any instance where the utility was run in “fix mode”.

16. Attribute lookups and relationships should generally not use fact tables.

17. Partition mapping tables for warehouse partitioning may never be used as attribute lookup or relationship tables.

18. All attributes name given in a Freeform SQL reports should be unique.

19. For a large schema, schema reading should be disabled in WH Catalog (to save time).

20. A new dependent able should not be added using WH catalog in PROD, as OM take care of it “now”. In fact doing this would add GUID inconsistency for lifetime of meatadata.

21. Use MicroStrategy (Datadirect) ODBC drivers even if you have product’s own drivers. (There are rare of rare instances (Some SQL issues) when MicroStrategy would ask you to use DBMS drivers)

22. Have a DSN naming convention.

23. Overlapped objects, Lines and rectangles, Relative paths for images, Line Breaks within text fields and Word-wrapping in grids would not be shown in Excel export of a RS document.

24. Schema objects should be created in a 2-tier connection when creating in bulk.

25. Perform a Schema update immediately before object migration.

26. Rename Administrator account to avoid hacking or better delete the account with login name Administrator.

27. Create at least three administrator level accounts to manage administrator account in case the password is lost.

28. When deleting a user, delete the profile too.

29. Avoid using Custom Groups as much as possible.

30. Not to overdo performance at the cost of correctness of report.

31. Login/password used in DNS used in MicroStrategy I-Server configuration should be a top secret. Person with bad intent can mess up metadata w/o any chance of recovery unless having backups.

32. No changes must be made into Prod server directly. There should be only object transfers into PROD environment.

33. Only in case of migration having gone bad and system can not be reverted back to the old system, change to PROD environment to make it at par with DEV/QA/UAT should be made.

34. Very limited person should have access to License Manager.

35. You can play around with Named User license ;-).

36. MicroStrategy doesn’t come to know about license violations if the I-Server restricted to access internet. (and if you are NOT doing it, don’t think that MicroStrategy, Inc. won’t come knocking your door to pay up, if there is prolonged license violations.)

MicroStrategy Best Practises – part 1

Architect, Database, Education

First installment of best practices for MicroStrategy focusing on data warehouse. Thumb rule of best BI implementation,n not just MicroStrategy, is the optimized for setting up the data warehouse correctly. Here are few from me, few from MicroStrategy tech notes lost in deep. I shall post the best practices for MicroStrategy soon.

1. Data warehouse design should be snowflake schema.

2. Don’t give direct access to tables. Create view and provide access to them. Don’t create custom views.

3. Login/Password used for creation of DNS used to configure the MicroStrategy should be secret. DBA must not tell them to anyone and should be present to input L/P when MSTR Admin is configuring the I-Server.

4. Unique key of table should not be dependent on another other column of same table irrespective of such a column part of unique key to not.

5. Everyone of MicroStrategy team must have individual access to an interface to run SQL queries against the DEV WH with create access.

6. Everyone of MicroStrategy team must know the PK, FK and composite key of each table in OLTP (source) system.

7. All leading and training white spaces in table cells must be cleansed. Using SQL in MSTR (for same) is not a great idea. White spaces decrease SQL speed and it is visible for large warehouses.

8. Only fact tables should be partitioned.

9. To keep the ETL simple, you might want to build your re-normalized structure first, and afterward “generate” the higher level look-ups from the lowest-level look-up table.

Look forward for addition and criticism for above.

Late Edit: Every statement above has a blog post to justify. [:)]

IBM India’s Cognostrategy

3rd Party, MicroStrategy

This is some what’s insider information, but may be something that MicroStrategy re-sellers should be knowing or should find out in due course of time. This is specific to India. MicroStrategy can not compete any BI tool to a the most price sensitive market of world, India. Even free is not something that people would easily go for, due to extremely low awareness about MicroStrategy BI in India. Sales is India doesn’t really affect much to MicroStrategy in the sense, it is not directly involved in selling the product here but only and only through authorized resellers, that to with a division of region of sales among them. But so far from last 7 years, sales of MicroStrategy is dismal. An recent consolidation in BI landscape has made things very tough for re-sellers, though I fail to understand why any damn company would go for Cognos/BO, even though they can’t beat MicroStrategy in any aspect, but price.

But how much the high price is hurting to adaption of MicroStrategy, I came to know while speaking with a friend only last week. First, MicroStrategy has around 30 clients in India, one of them having HQ right across my apartment. 😎 . Low penetration is mainly because of selective marketing by resellers but MicroStrategy, Inc has tried their hands. Now IBM is exploiting the high license cost of MicroStrategy in sales like anything. These guys (sales representative of Cognos) admit in front of client that MicroStrategy is highly scalable and better analytic capable than Cognos, but why to pay such a high price when you can have Cognos for BI and SAS for analytic, and is working great for them (IBM Cognos). Seriously a high price paid by MicroStrategy.

MicroStrategy really can’t do much about this evil marketing. Though I must say having two different tools would increase the cost of “experienced professionals” to handle them. Something that MicroStrategy reseller can counter argue. But after having lost Netizza, SPSS, Unica, etc. it is going to a tough market for them. also new kids on block like TableU are also giving them tough challenge in department BI sales, not here in India though.

All I can advice MicroStrategy is that you are the best BI. You can be the best BI, winning all accolades for the blah blah BI report, Nigel etc, done by independent authorities, but your scalability, features would be still used by least %age in industry due to very high cost of license and high cost of processionals (and tough search of them too). Just bring down your prices and see yourself sweeping the market.

Critical part of this blog is based on discussion with person who taught me MicroStrategy.