MicroStrategy Black Book

We all have to agree, MicroStrategy has a lot of features and offers a lot of control over them, but sometimes I feel I'm in the cockpit of a 747, with hundreds of knobs and switches and the worst part is: you don't know what you're going to break. Several years back, after couple of months deep into MicroStrategy, happened many times, in a report, to add filters and yet, the SQL generated to be incomplete. Incomplete as in not all filters in the report are part of the WHERE condition. After hustling for a while, I finally discovered the missing piece of the puzzle. There's a hidden set of options, at the metric condition level, controlling the interaction of those filters with the report filters. By default, MicroStrategy, will remove the report filter(s) based on the attribute being part of the same hierarchy, as the attribute used in the metric condition filter. That's why you can also be blindsided, if you don't correctly set the attribute r...

You're happy. The new MicroStrategy project is finally ready. You spent some time building attributes, facts, metrics and all the other necessary objects. But the same day, you receive an email from the database team announcing some table names changes. You are a bit disappointed for a moment, but then you remember there's an easy way to make these changes even if you have a ton of dependent objects based on those tables. The solution is right there and you're happy that you're going to fix it in seconds. Open Architect Identify (under Project Tables View) the table whose name has changed in the underlying database Select it and check the properties on the right Modify the name of the table under Definition -> Database Name and hot ENTER Acknowledge when metadata change has been made Set the same table name for the logical entry under Definition -> Name Save and update the schema Repeat steps 1 to 7 for as many tables...

It's been a long, bumpy road to maturity for MicroStrategy 10, but it’s finally here and its desktop version is now free. It's a tool meant for data newbies and professionals alike and is a great way for people to get in touch quickly with their data. MicroStrategy Desktop is a great self-service and discovery tool, that allows its users to integrate, prepare/wrangle and gain insight of their popular data sources. It allows people to either use it as a standalone client or connect to existing projects on the enterprise platform, for easier data exchange and dashboard sharing. I have to admit that it's fun to work with the latest version and discover the new capabilities. I did mention above that is a self-service and data discovery tool, but, being a techie guy, I also use it as a data profiling tool, due to its integrated wrangling tool that lets me prepare the data first before getting to analyze it. With over 70 connectors, which is a great toolbox to have, you can ...