MicroStrategy Object Tracking Tool


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MicroStrategy, SDK,

I have created MicroStrategy Object Tracking Tool (beta) for easy preparation of tracking sheet in a Excel. You can customize it by selecting date (creation, modification, from , to date, select number of object type. This toll is still beta. I made it as there are not way to achieve Version control in MicroStrategy. Looking for your suggestion to improve it and add more features. You can send me your comment by email or this blog. Utmost care is taken that this application doesn’t mess up with your metadata. I’ve used this application with production system in past.

This is a read only application. Using it will cause no changes to your Metadata.

Note:  This application is provided “as is” and I disclaim all warranties, whether express or implied, with respect to all provided items, including all warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, accuracy, systems integration, title, satisfactory quality and non-infringement. I do not warrant that use of the provided items or any portion thereof will be uninterrupted or error-free, or that the provided items or any portion thereof will meet any need or requirement of licensee.

The depressing story of the renamed fact


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MicroStrategy
The fact SALES_AMOUNT has been enjoying a quiet life for the last five years until, one rainy day, the new QA guy called Eureka! and proudly informed everyone that according to the naming conventions the fact name should be SLS_AMT. Of course, he took the liberty of checking the source tables and discovered that they too should be updated to match the aforesaid conventions. Way to go, QA guy!

What do you do? You could swear the QA guy or, if you are more literary inclined you could write him a bitter limerick and post it on the Intranet. Seriously now, how do you go about accommodating this change? I’ll skip the whole ETL part and go directly to MicroStrategy, right after the source tables were updated.

What you can’t do is go to the Warehouse Catalog and update the source tables’ definition. The catalog would just throw a number of dependencies that need to be solved before performing the update. You can’t delete the fact either, as it is being used by several metrics which in turn are being used in reports, and so forth.

The thing to do is to make the fact independent of any table. There are some ways this can be achieved, and one of them is to clear the fact definition and map it manually to “1”. You can actually write anything in the definition field, as long as it is not “SALES_AMOUNT”.


Thus the fact is no longer related to any of its source tables. Now it’s the time to update the tables’ definition in the Warehouse Catalog. After that, just go back to the fact editor and map it automatically to “SLS_AMT” and perform a schema update.

A similar process can be applied to attributes. Rather than mapping an attribute element to “1”, you can try to temporarily map it to any other column in any other table. Most likely the relationships with other attributes will be lost because of this, but they can easily be restored when all work is finished.

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.

Getting vehicle NOC (No objection certificate)


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Others

During my employment I’ve worked in 3 different states and need less to say that I have always relied on my bike to commute to office. We all know the fear of being caught by traffic constable/inspector in the other state. But here is way, getting an No Objection Certificate (NOC) for your current registering RTO.

To safely (w/o being harassed by cops) drive/ride vehicle registered in a different state, there are two method.

1. Carry fuel bills of a petrol pump located in your registering state. An ideal difference between two bills is 2 months. When traffic cops ask your bribe for outside vehicle first things to say “I can legally travel my bike fora year in another state without any NOC”. I’ve said that got away, once I was caught. But even if he insists than show him the bills. He won’t tough you.
(BTW, I was stopped 3 times by traffic cops and everytime got away but one thing was : all these cops noted down my registration number.) Those who don’t know they actually report an outside vehicle to the head office so as to catch him after one year no-NOC grace period is over.

2. This is legal but tedious way, specially when you have a vehicle on loan. The cost of NOC is zero. yes. There is no fees and Police report is required if your changing the “state”. After NOC you can apply for refund of tax (Form DT). In new state you need to file form No 33 for change of address to be recorded in the Certificate of Registration (RC). Once again, process is a bit tedious if there a loan. Agent cost is Rs 800 for NOC. One should forget refund of tax, as officers will make your run from piller to post (in case of inter-state transfer).

I would say, one should go for #1, a very simple and extremely cost effective way of living in different state. #2 for a car costs around 25 thousand (and for bike like 10K) and RTO can make your n number of rounds to office.

Happy driving/riding.