Top 50 Microstrategy Interview Questions You Must Prepare 19.Mar.2024

MicroStrategy Web is designed to be as stateless as possible. Therefore, no information is shared by the MicroStrategy Web application across cluster nodes. All state information for running jobs is pushed to the client browser.When a report is submitted by a MicroStrategy Web user, the user will receive a wait page in the client browser. This wait page will poll the MicroStrategy Web Server periodically for the status of the report. This polling is performed as new http requests. This http request will contain all state information, including encrypted login information and MicroStrategy Intelligence Server connection information.

The MSTR calculates the table key and based on the key value it would use the appropriate FACT table. If it doesn't use the appropriate FACT table for some reason, we can include the reference called FACTID within the Metric formula expression to indicate which FACT table to be used in that particular metric.

Yes. With the release of Microstrategy 8, Microstrategy Desktop incorporates a new dynamic data access engine designed to access multi-dimensional databases (MDDBs or OLAP Cube Databases) such as those from SAP Business Information Warehouse (BW) databases

MicroStrategy Intelligence Server is engineered to be platform-independent on a single code base and is simply compiled appropriately for each certified operating system. As a result, MicroStrategy can release Intelligence Server on all certified operating systems at the same time with the same features

To determine if two objects are the same, MicroStrategy Object Manager compares their Object ID's. If these ID's are the same, MicroStrategy Object Manager then compares the Version ID's. If the Version ID's are the same, the Conflict Resolution grid lists the conflict as 'Exists Identically.' If the Version ID's are different, the Conflict Resolution grid lists the conflict as 'Exists Differently.

To view the Object ID of an object, right-mouse click on the object and select 'Properties.' The Object ID and Version ID are listed on the 'General' tab.

Logical size is Microstrategy way of generating the best suitable/optimized SQL to fetch the required data. Microstrategy follows an algorithm to calculate the logical size of a table, which depends on the no of attributes and facts based on the table and also the position of those attributes in the system hierarchy. The logical size does not depend on the actual data (no of rows) in the database. If the candidate wers this than his concept is wrong

A user defines two attributes that have the same definition but play different roles in the business model. In this example, attribute Origin Airport and Destination Airport are defined using the same Lookup Table and Column (Airport_ID). Both attributes share the same forms, or information about them (Description, Location, etc.). In the fact table, however, a separate column exists for each of their roles (Origin_Airport_ID and Destination_Airport_ID).

Reports>Project>Database Instance>DBMS

Cross Joins occur when unrelated attributes(attributes that are not related to a metric or another attribute) are placed in a report

VLDB Properties can be set at various levels like Report, Template, Metric, Project, Database Instance and DBMS level. Out of this Report level has the highest priority. It overrides all other levels.

Yes, MicroStrategy Intelligence Server supports time-based and event-based schedules. These schedules automatically trigger report execution and place a notification message in the user's History folder upon completion.

The parent-child relationship helps in establishing the hierarchical structure to the entire logic and business model. For example, you can have the quarter to be a child of a specific year attribute. This will help us in having a modularized approach in the design and will help in establishing common usage semantics. The various types of relationships can be one to one, many to one, many to many, one to many relationships.

Through an easy-to-use subscription web page, users specify what information they want. Some personalization options include the language choices and specific information criteria such as certain products. Using this user profile, Microstrategy Narrowcast Server sends only the information that the user has requested.

A report cache is a result set from an executed report that is stored on MicroStrategy Intelligence Server. 4 types: matching caches, history caches, matching-history caches and xml caches.

1. Object Manager can move just a few objects or just the objects in a few folders. Project Merge moves all the objects in a project.
2. Object Manager must locate the dependents of the copied objects and then determine their differences before performing the copy operation. Project Merge does not do a dependency search, since all the objects in the project are to be copied.
3. Project Merge can be run from the command prompt in Microsoft Windows.

Yes. MicroStrategy Intelligence Server provides out-of-the-box clustering capabilities that allow corporations to leverage their initial investments and gradually scale as more users and data are added to the system, or when different styles of BI are required

The Conflict Resolution window provides the user with a me to decide how to handle object conflicts between the source project and the destination project. In addition, the Conflict Resolution window displays the object name in the original project, the object name in the destination project and the type of conflict. Users may also specify a new name for the object depending on the action chosen

Using MicroStrategy Object Manager to copy/move objects around is not recommended while other user sessions are making changes using MicroStrategy Agent, as it could lead to metadata inconsistency. Project and schema locking prevent multiple users sessions from manipulating the schema at the same time. This prevents metadata inconsistency from occurring.

Users have the ability to drill within the document, drill anywhere, or disable drilling. Drilling capabilities can be applied to a grid or graph, enabling users to perform an investigative analysis directly on a dashboard, scorecard, or enterprise report. Users can drill out of the dashboard to investigate across the data warehouse or multiple data sources and generate new information-rich reports.Using the multi-select feature, business users can dynamically select any group of elements and create derived element groups on the fly. Elements can be removed or added dynamically and users can create their own calculations between various groups or individual items

Yes. Every component of a BI application can be trlated and presented in multiple languages, including all MicroStrategy user interfaces, metadata objects such as the names of reports and documents, and data within a data warehouse.

MicroStrategy Intelligence Server provides one centralzed architecture for all users' monitoring, reporting and analysis requirements. MicroStrategy Intelligence Server also provides scalability to analyze any amount of data, support for any number of users and a 24 X 7 operating environment, with robust security

The level metrics are the metric calculation that are carried out over the specific attribute but at the different levels or dimensions. For example, the number of units sold is an attribute that we keep a count on. That metric can be calculated across time and region. Say number of units sold in last month and the number of units sold in specific region of the country. Here the region and time are two different levels. Such level based metric give analytical inference as to the performance of the organization etc.

Microstrategy Desktop has more than 10 different subtotaling functions that aid analysis of the data. Subtotals can be presented at any level in the rows, columns and pages on the report.

With OLAP Services Microstrategy Web, Desktop and Office users can:

  • Create unique report views based off an Intelligent Cube. With OLAP Services, users can create unique report views by adding or removing attributes and metrics contained within the Intelligent Cube. This allows speed-of-thought report creation and modification with no need to extract data from the data warehouse.
  • Create new on-the-fly metric calculations from existing metrics in an Intelligent Cube. The new calculation is performed without submitting a new request to the data warehouse.
  • Filter their view of the data within an Intelligent Cube. The filtering will be performed on Microstrategy Intelligence Server within the Intelligent Cube.

Report filters: report filters are the conditions that accompany the report generating SQL statements. The report definitions have the filters as part of their definition.

View Filters: View Filters are the conditions that come into play before a specific result is presented to the user. Thus the view filters are not part of the SQL statements like report definitions, rather they are the filters applied after the execution of the SQL statements, after the data is retrieved from the data warehouse.

Security in MicroStrategy Object Manager is based on the MicroStrategy 7.x Product Suite security model. All activities that can be performed in MicroStrategy Object Manager are governed by privileges and access control lists. For example, if a user is not allowed to access a certain folder in MicroStrategy Agent, they will not be able to access the folder in MicroStrategy Object Manager.

Yes. Microstrategy Desktop users can use a new Operational SQL Engine to include data from any operational system using completely free-form SQL, including stored procedures and views

Using Microstrategy Desktop, users can easily access and share critical corporate information they need to make cost-cutting decisions and improve business processes. The information found in databases can also be used to help increase revenue and boost profits. Users can access this database and SAP data without having to learn technical database query (SQL) or multi-dimensional expression (MDX) syntax.

Microstrategy Desktop installs in minutes and automatically presents a list of available Microstrategy Intelligence Servers. Within an hour, the installation and setup are completed

Yes, with the appropriate version of Microstrategy Web or Desktop, certain functions leverage the Intelligent Cubes. These functions include: report formatting down to cell level, column aliasing, drilling, pivoting, page-by, adding metric thresholds, adding subtotals, ranking and sorting. Please see the Web and Desktop version comparisons to determine exactly which Web or Desktop version includes the desired functionality.

Microstrategy Desktop is available in English, French, German, Spanish, Korean, Italian, Swedish, Japanese and Portuguese.

MicroStrategy offers out-of-the box templates that provide a great starting point for dashboard designers. Each template contains a series of containers, or panel stacks, that enable users to quickly add components to each panel stack, such as: text boxes, shapes, reports, grids, graphs, panel stacks, HTML containers, selectors, and widgets. Also, pre-formatted customized templates can be created to place the design experience in the hands of end-users. These pre-formatted templates can include the corporate logo and color layout. Users can simply drag, drop, and select dashboard components to quickly design a dashboard in the matter of minutes.

  • Column level security established by the imposing user specific access permissions in the database and having user specific connections.
  • Entire set of objects can be secured by imposing folder and object level security.
  • Row level security is imposed by having user specific security filters for various records.

A cache contains the properties and data of a report once a report has been run. Caches can be stored in memory and/or on disk. When users ask for a report that is cached, the Intelligence Server will retrieve the data from disk or memory instead of running a query on the data source. Cache creation and usage securely leverages other users' work, increases query performance and reduces the workload on the data warehouse

The Very Large Data Base properties is the configuration set that manages the overall way in which the database behaves and generates reports. There are many such settings like check for cross joins, intermediate table creation and type etc. The VLDB properties can be set at many different level like metric level, attribute level, Database Instance level, project level or the DBMS level. The highest precedence is given to the report level of configurations.

MicroStrategy Intelligence Server is available in English (US and UK), French, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese (Brazilian), Swedish, Chinese (Simplified and Traditional), Korean and Japanese

Yes. MicroStrategy Intelligence Server easily integrates with your existing data structure with its support for the major types of schemas like Star, Snowflake, Hybrid, Denormalized, Normalized and Aggregated Schema. MicroStrategy Intelligence Server also integrates with SAP® BW InfoCubes and QueryCubes.

Tracing is available under the Tools/Diagnostics menu. These tracing options apply to every MicroStrategy product installed on the machine.To see the SQL that has been executed against the metadata, go to the Advanced tab and turn on 'SQL Tracing' under the DSS MDServer key.Function level tracing can be accomplished by going to the Advanced tab and turning on 'Function Level Tracing' under the DSS ObjectManager key.

Reports can be attached to time-based or event-based schedules that are defined by the administrator. These schedules automatically trigger the report execution and place a notification message in the History folder on completion.

If the owner of the source object does not exist in the destination project, the user login for the destination project takes ownership of the object when it is copied or replaced.

When we use the absolute filtering in definition of level metric whatever data we obtain from the filter is goingto be reported as such and the the report filter will be overridden by the absolute filter settings. The standard filtering the report filter interacts with the metric filter in the normal way and what we obtain will be formatted according to the report filter settings

Information can be formatted into HTML, plain text, Microsoft® Excel, or PDF files. The size and display of these files are adjusted to suit the email type or the wireless device for different users.

The MSTR operates in such a way that the incoming queries and data retrievals are done from the table which has the least logical size. Thus if we prefer a specific table to be the center of activity then we should try to reduce the logical size of that specific table so that it becomes considerably lesser than the other tables.

The number of passes represents the number of times the SQL query has to be parsed and different parts of the query is handled for every pass. The fewer passes we have the more efficient the query executes and faster the reports are generated.

If an administrator removes a cluster node from a cluster, then all report caches that had been created by that cluster node will be inaccessible by the rest of the cluster, whether or not a separate file server is used as a common report cache. This behavior is by design.

MicroStrategy Web relies on third-party web-clustering software to provide clustering functionality. MicroStrategy Web is designed to be stateless so that each individual MicroStrategy Web node can function without the knowledge of the existence of other nodes. Therefore, any third-party software used to cluster web servers can be used.

Microstrategy Desktop can execute multiple reports simultaneously. Report results are saved in a personal History folder when ready

Microstrategy Desktop provides a host of security options to ensure that data is kept confidential and private. To facilitate easy deployment and minimal maintenance, Microstrategy Desktop integrates with Windows NT and 2000 security and with Novell directory. As a result, users who have logged into these systems will not need to log on again.