Category Archives: MicroStrategy

Metadata Browser v2.0


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Metadata, MicroStrategy, MicroStrategy 9, SDK,

While the merge with Object Tracking Tool is still in development, I am proud to introduce the new and improved version of Metadata Browser, which you can download here: MBsetupV2.0.exe

Improved Documentation Tool
New properties are now retrieved for common object types:

  • Metrics: dimensionality, condition, transformation, smart (yes/no)
  • Attributes: form, lookup table, child & parent relations
  • Filters: expression
  • Prompts: item list

Change Journal Tools
This new function only works with MicroStrategy version 9.0 or higher and it either shows the Change Journal entries for a single object or for all the objects in a particular folder.

God Mode
If you have admin rights you can connect using “God Mode” and thus gain access to hidden system files. An interesting use (found during the test phase) is to navigate to System Objects\Columns and make dependency searches directly on Columns.

MicroStrategy Metadat Browser God ModeThis is a read only application. Using it won’t cause any changes to your Metadata.

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MicroStrategy 9 BI Classes


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MicroStrategy

Attended MicroStrategy 9i BI Class today. Real good BI tool & lot of good things on the MicroStrategy 9. MicroStrategy, Inc identified lot of previous issues and resolved with this new version. I have worked in the Data warehouse environment more than 10 years starting from MicroStrategy 6 , 7i , 8 and now 9.

The main differentiating points compared to other BI tools:

  1. OLAP Cube + ROLAP / HOLAP together using MicroStrategy Architect.
  2. While drilling it can go from predefined cube to regular reports to detail level executed from database. No tool supports this. I liked this very much.The problem with other tools are:
    While building cube you need to specify all of the levels / dimensions into one cube , there is no way you can link multiple cubes link together in other tools. But In New version of MicroStrategy, it is supported.
  3. Dashboards are really interactive, I am sure users are going to like it very much.
  4. Way to implement quick & dirty way of importing excel data sources directly to MicroStrategy & do the quick Proof of concept to satisfy immediate needs of urgent user without going through the regular ETL Process & getting the data out through DB.
    — This satisfy the short term goals of any BI Project to show the progress quickly & it would be temporary solution until the actual and real proper solution. And also Quick Proof of Concepts.
    Since I experienced with lot of bigger clients they wanted immediate needs of some analysis , I happened to hard code some of the stuff and put into table directly & do similar approach & configure in the MicroStrategy as a separate projects to satisfy the short term solutions. But now it is going to be the quick through regular MicroStrategy project itself.
  5. Prepackaging integration of schema objects from distributed team environment also good. Because most of the BI projects are in the distributed environment nowadays. It is kind of similar to sending Cognos metadata files & migration.
  6. Lot of things which were only possible through MicroStrategy Desktop, now regular business users can do, so less problem for the IT team to support these kind of Public object creation & Maintenance.
  7. Creating Dashboard made it very easy in MicroStrategy 9.
  8. Web Single Sign On (SSO) is added through configuration.
  9. MicroStrategy architect user interfaces seems to be easy now. Concept wise it is same thing.

How to hide Metric column in MicroStrategy


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Metrics, MicroStrategy

For hiding Metric column only in Web: (assuming that English language was the Locale.)

  1. On the Web Server machine, go to the default location of Web ASPxWEB-INFclassesresources and open up the file called MessagesBundle_en_US.properties.
  2. Go to the line ‘mstrWeb.1158’. For English language, ‘Metrics’ is the value.
  3. Delete the word ‘Metrics’ and leave one single space.
  4. Save the close the file.
  5. Restart Web server.

Note: If an environment is being accessed by users that may not be using the project default language, the administrator will need to go in and modify each MessageBundle properties file for that respective language and clear the mstrWeb.1158 Metrics reference.

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For hiding Metric column in Desktop for Reports and RS documents.

1st method

  1. Goto Grid menu and check that Automatic Column width is disabled.
  2. Place the mouse between the Metrics column and the first metric on the report. Then, drag the column to the left until it is no longer present on the report:.

2nd method

  1. Open Options under Grid menu.
  2. Open tab Columns and Rows.
  3. Select radio button Fixed.
  4. Select Metric from dropdown menu and set 0 as pixen as width.

Search by ID is dead. Long live Search by ID!


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MicroStrategy, SDK

It appears that someone at MicroStrategy was receptive enough to come up with the idea of including a search by ID function in version 9. It’s called… “Search by ID” (act surprised now) and it can be found under the Tools menu of the “Search for Objects” window.

This, and the new “Translate” function in MicroStrategy 9 render my “Search by ID v2” application almost obsolete. I refrain from calling it completely obsolete for the sole reason that it still offers the direct and recurring dependents export to Excel function. To the date I still haven’t found a recurring dependents search function in MicroStrategy Desktop.

By the way, since I was confronted with a case when this tool was not able to find an object, I feel compelled to add a small tech note. If the user you log in with doesn’t have the right to “see” a particular object, then of course this object won’t be found by Search by ID v2. This may happen if the object you are looking for is placed in a colleague’s personal folder, or if that object has some kind of “Deny all” permission set for your user/usergroup.