MicroStrategy Quick Start Guide

Data analytics and visualizations for Business Intelligence

Fernando Carlos Rivero Esqueda

• Publisher: Packt Publishing
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781789136241
• eBook ISBN: 9781789138573
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Computer Science
• Subtopic: Business Intelligence
• Index: Computer Science

Build reporting applications and dashboards using the different MicroStrategy objects

Key Features

• Learn the fundamentals of MicroStrategy
• Use MicroStrategy to get actionable insights from your business data
• Create visualizations and build intuitive dashboards and reports

Book Description

MicroStrategy is an enterprise business intelligence application. It turns data into reports for making and executing key organization decisions. This book shows you how to implement Business Intelligence (BI) with MicroStrategy. It takes you from setting up and configuring MicroStrategy to security and administration.

The book starts by detailing the different components of the MicroStrategy platform, and the key concepts of Metadata and Project Source. You will then install and configure MicroStrategy and lay down the foundations for building MicroStrategy BI solutions. By learning about objects and different object types, you will develop a strong understanding of the MicroStrategy Schema and Public Objects. With these MicroStrategy objects, you will enhance and scale your BI and Analytics solutions.

Finally, you will learn about the administration, security, and monitoring of your BI solution.

What you will learn

• Set up the MicroStrategy Intelligence Server and client tools
• Create a MicroStrategy metadata repository and your first Project
• Explore the main MicroStrategy object types and their dependencies
• Create, manipulate, and share Reports
• Create and share Dashboards
• Manage Users and Groups

Who this book is for

This book is for Business Intelligence professionals or data analysts who want to get started with Microstrategy. Some basic understanding of BI and data analysis will be required to get the most from this book.

Basic Reporting - Building Your First Reports

After learning about the MicroStrategy Project foundation and the main types of objects, it is time to build your first Report. To accomplish this, it is necessary to learn a few new concepts and some additional objects. This chapter will introduce you to the Public Objects, also known as Application Objects. Then we will build some basic Public Objects, including a Report, Filters, and Metrics. We will end this chapter with some fundamental Report manipulations.

The following topics will be covered in this chapter:

• Understanding MicroStrategy Public Objects
• Explaining MicroStrategy Reports and how to create one
• Explaining MicroStrategy Templates and how to create one
• Explaining MicroStrategy Filters and how to create one
• Explaining MicroStrategy Metrics and how to create one
• Performing Report manipulations

Your analyzing blocks – Public Objects

The MicroStrategy Public Objects are also known as Application Objects. As the name suggests, these objects are used by the users and analysts (Public), and their main purpose is to create analytic and BI applications. There is usually more than one developer maintaining this type of object. Therefore, unlike the Schema Objects, it is not necessary to perform an update schema after any Public Object creation or change.

Some Public Objects are built upon the foundation that the Schema Objects have created. In other words, some have, as components, other Schema Objects such as Attributes or Facts. There are also other Public objects that are built entirely using other Public Objects or a mix of these and Schema Objects. The following diagram depicts both Schema and Public Objects and which objects are used to build them:

Your main analysis tool – Reports

All Public / Application Objects serve one purpose: to build Reports or Documents (Dashboards) that will allow users to perform analysis. Reports are the primordial analytical assets in any organization.

The following is a quick reference table for this MicroStrategy Object:

MicroStrategy Reports are Application Objects that serve the purpose of allowing final users to visualize, analyze, manipulate, and discover information and trends. Reports are made of two main components: one Template and one or more Filters.

Creating a MicroStrategy Report is a fairly simple task. It just requires combining a Template with a Filter. We will learn in the following sections that the majority of time spent designing a Report is actually time that the developer requires to build the underlying objects such as Filters, Metrics, and Templates.

Understanding the Report Editor

The Report Editor has three main sections. Other sections not visible can be accessed via the View menu.

Refer to the following screenshot for each section:

1. The upper-left area is called the Report objects window. It lists all objects that are part of the Report definition. If MicroStrategy OLAP Services are licensed, then developers can create Reports in which part of its definition can be hidden in the Reports Objects while other objects are shown in the Report View (where the Local Template is). This is helpful to create different views from the same Report.
2. The lower left section is the Object Browser. It provides a tree-like structure navigation similar to Microsoft Explorer and some shortcuts to access the most-used folders. This section will be utilized to find the Report components; either drag or double click them into one of the two above areas.
3. The upper-right section is the Report Filter area, where the Filters are added.
4. The lower-right area is the Report View, where the Report Template resides.

Exercise – create your first Report

In this exercise, you will learn to create a Report using preexisting objects on the Tutorial Project. Later on, you will learn to create the underlying objects to build a Report from scratch. Take the following steps:

1. In MicroStrategy Developer, log in to the MicroStrategy Analytics Modules Project Source.
2. Open the MicroStrategy Tutorial Project.
3. Browse to the folder MicroStrategy Tutorial | Public Objects | Reports.
4. Create a subfolder named My Exercises.

You create a folder the same way you do in the Microsoft Explorer.

5. Once inside the My Exercises folder, right-click | New | Report. A New Grid window will pop up. Le...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright and Credits
• Dedication
• Packt Upsell
• Foreword
• Contributors
• Preface
• Architecture - Installing and Configuring MicroStrategy
• Project Design - Creating Your Project Foundation
• Basic Reporting - Building Your First Reports
• Advanced Reporting - Interacting with and Improving Your Reports
• Dashboarding - Creating Visual Reporting
• Security - Managing Your Users and Their Access
• Administration - Maintaining and Monitoring Your Project
• Quick Reference Tables by Object Type
• Other Books You May Enjoy