Category: microstrategy

MicroStrategy Tutorial PDF Version Quick Guide Resources Job Search Discussion MicroStrategy is a Business Intelligence software, which offers a wide range of data analytics capabilities. As a suite of applications, it offers Data Discovery, Advanced Analytics, Data Visualizations, Embedded BI, and Banded Reports and Statements. It can connect to data warehouses, relational systems, flat files, web services and a host of other types of sources to pull data for analysis. Features such as highly formatted reports, ad hoc query, thresholds and alerts, and automated report distribution makes MicroStrategy an industry leader in BI software space. It is recognized as a visionary by Gartner Magic Quadrant. Audience This tutorial is designed for all those readers who want to create, read, write, and modify Business Intelligence Reports and dashboards using MicroStrategy Desktop. In addition, it will also be quite useful for those readers who look forward to become a Data Analyst or a Data Scientist. Prerequisites Before proceeding with this tutorial, you should have a basic understanding of Computer Programming terminologies and Data analysis. You should also have some knowledge on various types of graphs and charts. Familiarity with SQL will help in fast learning. Print Page Previous Next Advertisements ”;

MicroStrategy – Dicing ”; Previous Next The Dicing operation of a data set involves creating a smaller data set by fetching multiple values of one dimension with respect to one value from another dimension. For example, we get the values of sales for different subcategory of products with respect to one single category. Here, there is a hierarchical relationship between the category and sub-category of products. Consider the data set superstore which contains the following dimensions − Customer segment Product category Product sub-category Profit Following screenshots show the steps to dice the data with respect to the dimensions customer segment and product sub-category. Step 1 Let’s first create a grid report with the dimensions Customer segment and Product subcategory. We can also add the metric Profit. Step 2 Next, let”s create a filter using the dimension customer segment. For this filter, we choose the value ”Customer segment”. However, we get the value of profit for all the values of sub-categories under this customer segment. Here, the data is diced across the subcategories for a given customer segment. Print Page Previous Next Advertisements ”;

MicroStrategy – Schema Objects ”; Previous Next Schema Objects are the MicroStrategy Objects which are logical representation of the structures of a data warehouse. These are the objects which are decided during the creation of a MicroStrategy project. Login to MicroStrategy developer as administrator. Navigate to MicroStrategy Tutorial and expand the Schema Objects option. The following screen opens up showing the various schema objects. Following are the various Schema Objects with their description. Facts − They are the numeric values, which can be aggregated to represent the value of some business data. Attributes − They represent the granularity of data in the facts table. They are generally the descriptive data from the business. Hierarchies − They represent the relationship between various attribute values. They help in carrying out drill-up and drill-down analysis on the data. Functions and Operators − These are the various inbuilt mathematical functions and operators available in MicroStrategy to apply calculations to the data. Tables − They simply represent data in a tabular form (columns and rows). Transformations − They are the data transformation features used for time-series based analysis of the data. Partition Mapping − This feature is used to create a logical division of the partition of fact tables so the querying becomes more efficient. Print Page Previous Next Advertisements ”;

MicroStrategy – Formatting a Dashboard ”; Previous Next A dashboard is made up of multiple visualizations. Different parts of the dashboard can be formatted for a better look using the formatting dashboard option available. In the following example, we are going format a dashboard using additional colors and highlighted areas. Step 1 Consider the dashboard visualization we created in the last chapter. Choose the Dashboard formatting option as shown in the following screenshot. Step 2 Next, in the screen that pops up with formatting options such as selecting the font, fill color and border style, etc. make the selections as shown in the following screenshot. Step 3 Finally, the formatting is applied to the dashboard. The formatting reflects in both the visualizations present in the dashboard. Print Page Previous Next Advertisements ”;

MicroStrategy – Intelligent Cubes ”; Previous Next When we run the reports created in MicroStrategy, they fetch the data from the warehouse to apply the calculations and generate a report. When multiple users request for the same report but with different range of values or different filter conditions, then the warehouse has to repeat similar calculations for each of the report and this hits the performance. To avoid this, MicroStrategy uses intelligent cubes, which is an object sitting in the middle layer between reports and the warehouse. The following diagram depicts the role of the intelligent cube. The Intelligent Cube is shared as a single in-memory copy, among the different reports created by many users. A set of data is returned from the data warehouse and saved directly to the Intelligence Server memory. Multiple reports are built that gather data from the Intelligent Cube instead of querying the data warehouse. Following are the features, which make intelligent cubes useful. Supports dynamic aggregation. Can be scheduled for refresh. Supports derived metric creation. Faster performance than directly querying warehouse. More than one cube can be used in a single dashboard. Print Page Previous Next Advertisements ”;

MicroStrategy – Creating Metrics ”; Previous Next Metrics in MicroStrategy are the calculations performed on data. They are the derived columns which show results such as sum or average of some numeric values of a column in source data. They are useful in creating custom calculations required by business. Creation of a metric involves using the in-built functions already available in MicroStrategy. The formula editor is used to create the formula for a metric. Example In this example, we aim to find the average sales for each sub-category under every category from the sales data. This can be done by creating a metric which uses the Avg Function to find the average sales. The steps to create and use this metric is as follows. Step 1 Create a report with Category and sub-category as its two columns. Next, right click anywhere under the data source tab and near any of the measure fields. A pop-up appears which shows the create metric option. Step 2 In the Metric editor, write the formula for the average sales. Save the metric by giving it a name, say “AvgSales”. Step 3 Now, the metric AvgSales appears under the Dashboard Data as a measure. It can be dragged to the metric filed and then appears in the report. Print Page Previous Next Advertisements ”;

MicroStrategy – Pivoting ”; Previous Next Pivoting of data in tables is done when we want to swap the position of columns and rows. It is also called rotating data. The change in such structure produces different kinds of summaries of data. Example The sales value for the table All_sales is summarized for each Business Line. In the following screenshots, each row represents a Business Line and Sales value for each product line in different columns. However, if we want to see the result as Product Line in each row and Business Line in each column, then we have to apply pivoting. Following are the steps to apply the pivot. Step 1 Create the Table with the required dimensions and measures as shown in the following screenshot. Here, sales is summarized and shown for each business line in each row. Step 2 Using the visualization editor, swap the dimensions in the rows and columns. Use the swap button as shown in the following screenshot. Result As we can see the summary of sales is now displayed for product line in each row. Print Page Previous Next Advertisements ”;

MicroStrategy – Desktop ”; Previous Next The MicroStrategy Desktop environment is very intuitive. It has a simple menu to import data for analysis and export the result of analysis. The menu also provides features to connect to a server if required, view the data sets available, the visualization gallery, and data filtering options, etc. Desktop Windows Following screenshot shows the image of MicroStrategy desktop windows. Following is a brief description of each of these windows. Dataset Panel − This is used to add the required data sets to be analyzed. The data sets can come from any of the compatible sources. This section also gives an option to connect to the data sets available in MicroStrategy server. Editor Panel − This is used to bring in the required rows and columns from the data set for analysis. Also the different matrices or mathematical expressions can be applied to the data analysis available here. Properties Panel − This panel is used to set the display formats of the data such as font size, color alignment. etc. Filter Panel − This panel is used to apply various filters on the data sets being analyzed. Visualizations − It is the panel which shows data analysis. You can drag the data objects to this panel and apply a method of visualization to see the results. Visualization Gallery − This panel displays the inbuilt-visualizations available, which can be applied directly on the data set. The various visualizations available are – Heat maps, bar charts, bubble charts, network diagrams, etc. It also allows to create custom visualizations. Print Page Previous Next Advertisements ”;

MicroStrategy – Overview ”; Previous Next As a Business Intelligence tool with wide range of capabilities, MicroStrategy has powerful features that helps to find answers and insights in business data analysis. Following are some of the important features. Data Discovery This feature enables MicroStrategy to connect to any data source and blend the data from various sources. It can connect to relational sources, flat files, big data sources, social media platforms, and cloud systems to name a few. Data Wrangling This feature helps in data transformation and modification with an extensive set of builtin data wrangling and parsing capabilities. Business users benefit from automatic recommendations while data scientists can leverage the full breadth of wrangling capabilities. There are history scripts that remember data transformations and can be reapplied to any analysis. Data Mining and Predictive Analysis MicroStrategy has a wide range of native analytical capabilities, with the option to easily incorporate third-party data mining and modeling tools. The Data Mining Services can be used by business users, report designers and analysts to view and build predictive reports and distribute these reports to users on any device. Library of Analytics Functions It has an extensive library of over 300 OLAP, mathematical, financial, and data mining functions, which can be used to better understand the relationships between data, create business metrics and top-level KPIs, or build advanced statistical analyses. Extensible Visualization Library It has out-of-the-box grids, graphs, and in-built data visualizations tools. It also allows addition of hundreds of open-source visualizations available from D3 or other providers with built-in tools that help with the integration process. It also has a visualization builder and SK to code a new visualization from scratch. Real-time Dashboards You can build dashboards that can source live data to provide real-time monitoring of the most current information. With scheduled updates that have controllable intervals, users can be guaranteed of the latest data. Embedded BI MicroStrategy comes with several out-of-the-box development-ready portlets that require no additional coding. These portlets allow organizations to seamlessly embed MicroStrategy functionality with IBM WebSphere, Oracle WebLogic, Microsoft SharePoint, and SAP NetWeaver, among others. A portal integration kit includes sample code and documentation for integrating MicroStrategy Web with other enterprise portals. Mobile Platform The existing visualizations, reports, and dashboards are instantly available in mobile platforms, once they are created. Print Page Previous Next Advertisements ”;

MicroStrategy – Configuration Objects ”; Previous Next MicroStrategy objects appear in the system layer and are usable across multiple projects. Configuration objects include objects such as users, database instances, database login IDs, and schedules. On logging in to MicroStrategy Developer, as a admin we get the Administration option under MicroStrategy Secure Enterprise. Expanding this option gives us the various configuration objects which are discussed in the following sections. User Manager These objects are used by the administrator to manage the MicroStrategy users. It is configured to handle the following user configurations. It offers the following configuration options − User authentication − To allow the user into the environment. User groups − A collection of users to whom some specific privilege is assigned. User privileges − To use only a subset of all the features available in the environment. User permissions − To allow/disallow the use of a specific object. Configuration Manager These objects are used to manage the database connectivity information. They store the path and credential information for the many databases to which MicroStrategy can connect. It offers the following configuration options − Database instance − The name of the database instance and its credentials. The Connection lifetime − This limit is the maximum amount of time that a database connection thread remains cached. Events − Triggers the tasks related to a database event. Security role − Control the access of the user to various objects in the database. System Monitor There are many system monitors which help in identifying the health of the MicroStrategy environment. They help in predicting the load on the system and any performance issue that is likely to arise. Following are some of the important system monitor options. Jobs − Monitors currently executing jobs. User Connections − Monitors the number of user connections at a given time. Caches − Monitors the number of caches and their sizes. System Administration This administrative activity involves setting up various projects, allocate clusters to the projects, and schedule the maintenance windows. Print Page Previous Next Advertisements ”;