I happen to know a guy or two whose curiosity for Intelligence Server SDK increased alarmingly in the last couple of months. I dedicate this article to them, and anybody who would like to get their hands dirty with some cool stuff.
But first of all, what is IS SDK? Most of the SDK guys are familiar with the Web SDK, the one which allows endless customizing to the web interface of MicroStrategy, amongst other things. Intelligence Server SDK, on the other hand, deals with reading, creating, modifying and executing objects from your Metadata. One can easily consider it to be Command Manager’s big brother who went to College. Unlike Command Manager, IS SDK is anything but user friendly. But man, it packs a serious punch if you learn how to handle it! The documentation and Tech Notes do provide all the necessary information to do just about anything, but actual examples are scarce.
IS SDK can be used via Visual Basic or C++. Since I’m by no means a pure breed programmer, I work with VBA, which is more or less like speaking English to the computer.
Enough introductions already. If you want to unleash its power, the first thing you must do is connect to a project. This apparently simple task poses enough challenges to deter many an enthusiastic programmer from going any further. I find this counterproductive and quite discomforting.
This is why I assembled a startup kit customized for VB6, which offers the code and explanations on how to connect to a project. Actually, it is the exact form that I used for Metadata Browser.
Download here:
Connection.zip
Updates and new tips may come in the future, depending on your feedback.
Man, I wish I knew about this a month back. Would have saved me a lot of time. Spent many hours getting IS sdk setup with vb6. You did what mstr should have done. Great job!
Thanks Sorin. I’m learning SDK using your code to connect to Server. It is very helpful in as that’s what someone would be looking for doing development using MicroStrategy (Server) SDK.
I found more info from SDK documentaion. Hope it helps everyone.
IDSSDataSourceEnumerator interface returns a collection of DSSDataSource handles upon request from DSS applications such as the MicroStrategy Desktop.
DSSDataSource interface is used to support the client to connect to a server or to create a session to connect to a project DSSDataSource object is created for the client by the DSSSourceEnumerator object.
IDSSSession interface provides a context that the client can get the required components and use the components.
Thank you both for your comments!
Now that the connection is no longer a mystery, I’d like to find out how to handle multiple connections at the same time, the way Desktop does.
If any of you finds a way of doing this, please share it! I tried defining objSession as an array but it didn’t work.
Hi,
Has anyone used the SDK to export information from Microstrategy’s metadata repository? We have our own enterprise metadata center/repository, and we want to add the Microstrategy metadata (for reports…) to it as needed.
Thanks,
Greg