Category Archives: Education

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. [:)]

MicroStrategy Basic for Dummies!

Education, MicroStrategy,

5 very informative online videos to learn basics of MicroStrategy. Deserve a dekho.

  1. Set Up and Configure the Server
  2. Design Attributes and Hierarchies
  3. Design Metrics, Filters, and Prompts
  4. Add Users
  5. Go Live on the Web

Check out all videos here.

There is a Chines proverb – A Picture can say 1000 words
and Indian upgrade – video can say 1000000 words 😉

Last but not least, you can learn MicroStrategy of you own provided you have it installed and go though the online tutorials religiously. They rock! Real MicroStrategy Education USD 650 a day tutorials for free reading. If anyone know any method to store them offline, please share. Finally MicroStrategy is serious about having more number of MicroStrategy professionals in world. Hope to see the MicroStrategy books on Amazon too, not with USD 650 tag as charged currently by MicroStrategy Education.

Questions for Narrowcast Server Essentials

Education, MicroStrategy, Narrowcast Server,
  1. __________________ is responsible for the creation, formatting, transmission and administration of information services.

  1. ________________ is responsible for the gathering of user profiles and preferences through a web-based subscription site.

  1. Narrowcast Server information transmitters transmit services using _________ and _________.

  1. Which of the following are the featured components of Narrowcast server –

  1.  
    1. Narrowcast Administrator
    2. Delivery Engine
    3. Portal Administrator
    4. Subscription Engine
    5. Subscription Portal
    6. Alerts Engine

Answer Choices

i. a, b, c, d, e

ii. a, b, c, e, f

iii. a, b, d, e, f

iv. a, b, c, d, e, f

  1. Match the following –

Module

Function

a. Information Source

i. Connect to local or remote systems such as SMTP, SMS, WAP servers to deliver formatted content

b. Information Transmission

ii. Transforms raw data provided by information source into formatted message, output formats supported being text, HTML and Excel by default

c. Document Formatting

iii. Used to retrieve personalized information from local or remote systems such as Intelligence Server.

  1.  
    1. a à i, b à ii, c à iii
    2. a à ii, b à i, c à iii
    3. a à iii, b à i, c à ii
    4. a à iii, b à ii, c à i

  1. A service can have different publications each supporting a different language.
    1. True
    2. False

  1. The three different information to defined for an e-mail (SMTP) content are _____________________, ______________________ and ______________________.

  1. ________________________ is used to view the log when a service is run.

  1. Which of the following are true?

  1.  
    1. Content information object pulls dynamic data from an information source.
    2. Document is a complete formatted object which can have both static content and dynamic content
    3. Document can contain only one information object
    4. Publication is a collection of documents specifying the content of a service
    5. Publications specify information transmission module, locale and devices

Answer Choices

i. Only a, c and d

ii. Only a, b and d

iii. Only a, b, d and e

iv. a, b, c, d and e

  1. Which of the following are true?
    1. Information transmission module sets the rules for the types of documents supported by a publication
    2. Locale specifies regional characteristics like Language, number, date and time formats
    3. Device sets the formatting and transmission properties such as cell padding and embedding image support
    4. The device specified in the publication MUST match the device in the subscription set for a recipient

Answer Choices

i. Only a, b and d

ii. Only a, b and c

iii. a, b, c and d

iv. Only b, c and d Continue reading →