Heros of this blog


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Personal, ,

There are two heroes of this blog, whom I’ve mentioned a couple of time. They finally arrived on this blog and left some comments. Actually in Jan 2008.

Gurvinder Singh Chhatwal (Project Manager of MicroStrategy-QA project in Cybage, Pune)
“At least a MILLION times people around you, who have worked and lived with you have told you what an IDIOT you are. But seems you still fail to understand.
Pity on you.”

Paramjeet Singh Sidhu (Project Lead of MicroStrategy-QA project in Cybage, Pune)
“No wonder you write all bullshit about the people you work with because they all know how sick your thoughts and you were (seems like you still are). Anywayz, you and your fantasies go on and on.
May god help you.”
———
People like you give me good learning. I’ll not forget Cybage because of people like you. I owe you this. I pity having worked under you guys. I don’t think I’ll ever get any manager like you and pray to god that no one in this world gets it. and who was/is sick is known to persons concerned. May god help both of you. Last but not least, thanks for stopping by on the blog.

Data Modelling questions


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Uncategorized

Goal Alignment queries:

  • What is the strategic goal of the organization that is being addressed by this particular activity?
  • What organizational mission/vision does it relate to?
  • Do we have a hypothesis as to how this initiative will eventually improve results / performance (i.e. a strategy map)?

Baseline queries:

  • What is the existing level of performance? Do we know or have the capability to know (monitoring capability)?
  • Are we collecting this data and storing it somewhere?
  • What are the statistical parameters of this data, e.g. how much random variation does it contain? Are we measuring this?

Cost and risk queries:

  • What is the existing cost of present operations?
  • How much will that increase when we go ahead with the initiative?
  • What is the risk that this cost will be exceeded or achieved? Have we performed a similar sensitivity analysis on this?
  • Is the money being spent on this preset initiative the best use of the funds, or is there a better alternative usage?
  • What is the risk that the initiative will fail? Has this assessment been included in the planning?

Customer and Stakeholder queries:

  • Have you listed all the communities of interest that have a stake in this present initiative?
  • Who are the kinds of customers/stakeholders who will benefit directly from this initiative? Who will benefit indirectly? What are the quantitative / qualitative benefits?
  • Is the specified initiative the best way to increase satisfaction for all kinds of customers, or is there a better way?
  • How will we know that the initiative benefits these customers?

Metrics related queries:

  • What metrics will be used to define the benefit?
  • Are these the best metrics? How do we know that?
  • How many metrics need to be tracked? If this is a large number (it usually is), what kind of system are you planning to use to track them?
  • Are the metrics standardized, so they can be benchmarked against performance in other organizations? What are the industry standard metrics available?

Measurement Methodology related queries:

  • How will the metrics be measured? What methods will be used, and how frequently will data be collected? Are there any industry standards for this?
  • Is this the best way to do the measurements? How do we know that?

Results related queries:

  • How can we demonstrate that this strategic initiative, and not something else, contributed to a change in results?
  • How much of the change was probably random?

MicroStrategy Intelligence Server query flow


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Engine, Metadata

The main components of MicroStrategy Intelligence Server are:

  1. Intelligence server bus
  2. Intelligent Cubes server
  3. Communication layers for the metadata and data warehouse
  4. SQL Generation Engine
  5. Query Engine
  6. Analytical Engine

The query flow below describes the primary functions of each component.

MicroStrategy Intelligence Server query flow

  1. The MicroStrategy Intelligence Server receives a report request from any interface.
  2. The request is passed to the Intelligence Server bus, which coordinates all the tasks necessary to execute the report.
  3. Intelligence Server first checks the cache to see whether the report results are already there. The report results will already be in cache if another user or a schedule previously ran the report. If a cache exists, Intelligence Server skips directly to step 9.
  4. If no valid cache exists for the report, the Intelligence Server bus obtains the report definition and application objects from the metadata.
  5. The bus sends this information to the SQL Generation Engine. The SQL Generation Engine creates the optimized SQL, specific to the database being used. The SQL passes are then returned to the bus.
  6. The bus sends the SQL to the Query Engine. The Query Engine runs the SQL against the data warehouse and the report results are returned to the bus.
  7. The Intelligence Server bus invokes the Analytical Engine. Additional calculations are performed as necessary (when the calculation is unavailable in the database being used), and the Analytical Engine formats the results. The results are returned to the Intelligence Server bus.
  8. Depending on the analytical complexity of the report, the results might be passed back to the SQL Generation Engine for further processing by the database. Only MicroStrategy can provide this collaborative analysis with the database, resulting in forms of queries that can only be solved by MicroStrategy. In this case, steps 4–6 are repeated until the final report results are obtained. Finally, the formatted results are returned to the client communication layer.
  9. The Intelligence Server passes the formatted results back to the client.

———————————————-
I had this article for around 2+ years in my archives. Most probably this is an internal MicroStrategy document. If you are © owner and want me to pull this down, please post a comment. There is a link to post comment. I come to know about any comment on blog as soon as it happens. If you can help me with the origin/source of this document, please help me. This is the first post on this blog which is not straight from heart, but hope I don’t deviate from it.

Tiers in MicroStrategy


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I-Server, Metadata, MicroStrategy

I have heard people saying web is three tier connection in several interview and desktop (with I-server) is a two tier connection. Such answers about tiers really gives me tears. [:)]. You are hear reading this page just mean that you are too lazy to read the MicroStrategy PDFs. Anyways here is the information about various tiers.

Anything that doesn’t requires I-server is 2 tier. One can have two tier connection not only with Access but also SQL Server, Oracle, Netizza, Teradata, etc, In fact with any damn database. In such case, Desktop and Metadata/Database are two tires. DSN is important in this case. In fact that become heart in 2 tier. You never need to use Configuration Manager in case of a 2 tier connection.

Any time you use configuration manager to connect I-Server to Metadata (obviously with DSN) is a three tier. In this case the tiers are, Desktop – I-Server – Metadata/Database.

Any time you use Web is a 4 tier architecture. And tiers are as follows.
Web Browser – Web Server – I-Server – Metadata/Database.

A 5 tier architecture is also possible. There are various vendors who sell installable reporting tool based on MicroStrategy architecture. In this case the 5th tier sits between Web Browser and Server.

Version control in MicroStrategy


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MicroStrategy, Schema

MicroStrategy doesn’t support Versioning. BTW, There are two types of versioning in MicroStrategy. Source control (what I’m taking about over here) and Slowly changing dimension (SCD). Lots of clients have put requests to MicroStrategy to have this feature of version control for schema object or at least attributes. In short the answer for this question is NO and I would never want MicroStrategy to have this features. Such a feature request is only idea that can come from bad MicroStrategy practice. Why in this world, do you want to have two definition. If a change in attribute breaks a report or sql goes haywire, one should rather fix this (that why it is job of MicroStrategy Architect). Such a feature would lead to lots of useless trial-n-error stuff in MicroStrategy. If you know any company who is behind this feature request, please post the name over here.

FYI, as per document ID (TN4100-800-0349), A current enhancement request exists for this functionality. Contact MicroStrategy Technical Support for the latest update of this request.

This would be a good feature for nuts in MicroStrategy and will give sane people hard time.

Update 13 Feb 2009

Cognos supports this feature. But one can’t use different object(s) from different set of version. :-(