Microstrategy Interview Questions - part 13What functionality is contained in MicroStrategy Administrator - Object Manager 7.x and 8.0.x?
MicroStrategy Administrator - Object Manager allows users to perform the following actions:
• Duplicate and upgrade projects
• Copy objects within and across related projects
• Move objects within a project
• Delete objects within a project
• Rename objects within a project
• Search for objects within a project
• Find an object's parents or children within a project
Are there any special requirements needed to move objects across projects?
Yes. In order to perform cross-project operations, the projects involved must originate from the same source project. In other words, the projects can only be related by the duplication of a single project. This ensures that the projects have a similar set of schema and application objects, and that the object ID's in the two projects are the same. MicroStrategy Object Manager uses the object and version ID's across the projects to perform comparisons. MicroStrategy Object
Manager prevents the user from attempting operations across unrelated projects.
How does MicroStrategy Object Manager determine if two projects are related?
MicroStrategy Object Manager compares the Schema ID's of the two projects. Duplicated projects have different Project ID's, but their Schema ID's are the same.
What happens if a user tries to move objects between two unrelated projects?
If a user tries to perform cross-project operations between two unrelated projects, MicroStrategy Object Manager will not permit the operation and will display the following error:
Objects cannot be copied across the projects because these two projects, "Project name of the source" and "Project name of the destination", have not been created from the same source. For more information see Chapter 4: Managing Your Applications, in the System Administration Guide.
What is the Conflict Resolution Window?
The Conflict Resolution window provides the user with a means 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.
How does MicroStrategy Object Manager determine if two objects in different projects are the same?
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.'
How can the user determine the Object ID of an object?
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.
Why does MicroStrategy Object Manager search for object dependencies?
MicroStrategy Object Manager makes a list of all object dependencies before copying an object to prevent metadata inconsistency. The time required for dependency checking varies based on a customer's metadata size and schema complexity. For large metadata and complex schemas, gathering all the dependencies may take a long time.
Can schema objects be copied across projects with MicroStrategy Object Manager?
Yes, schema objects can be copied across projects using MicroStrategy Object Manager. MicroStrategy Object Manager moves objects seamlessly between similar projects such as from a development project version to a production project version where the warehouses are the same in terms of views, prefixes, and warehouse structure. However, subtle changes in the warehouse that relate to prefixes, views, or table structure cannot be tracked by MicroStrategy Object Manager. For situations where the projects' warehouse structures or setups are dissimilar, users may be required to make further edits of the objects to ensure full integration into the destination project. These edits may include hierarchical relationship changes or modifications to the prefixes.
How does MicroStrategy Object Manager integrate with the MicroStrategy Product Suite security model?
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.
Is it possible to use MicroStrategy Object Manager while other users are making changes in MicroStrategy Agent?
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.
What are the tracing options available in MicroStrategy Object Manager?
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.
Where are dependent objects copied if they do not already exist in the destination project?
If the location exists in the destination project, the dependent object is copied to that location. If the location does not exist in the destination project, a new folder entitled 'Dependencies' is created and the object is copied to that folder.
What happens if the owner of an object does not exist in the destination project?
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.
Where can users find more information on MicroStrategy Object Manager? Further information can be found in the release notes, as well as in MicroStrategy Object Manager's online help. |
Microstrategy Interview Questions - part 12- Why do businesses need to send information out to users proactively?
- People do not have time to search through information to identify information that requires immediate action. An intelligent alerting system understands and constantly monitors the information users need, and delivers information only when users need it. Users save time and take action when required.
- How do current Microstrategy Narrowcast Server customers use Intelligent Alerting?
- Customers use Microstrategy Narrowcast Server to deliver inventory alerts, business performance alerts, supply chain alerts, customer activity alerts, stock and personal finance alerts, last minute travel alerts, data load alerts, customer account activity alerts, and fraud alerts. New uses are constantly being developed for intelligent alerting.
- How do users receive only information that they want?
- 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.
- Can users turn off the information delivery?
- Yes, users can switch on and off their own information delivery. Administrators can also set up some ‘non-optional’ information delivery so that everyone receives the information. As a result, users can obtain information without having to wait for IT to develop the reports.
- What kinds of information can users receive?
- Users can receive both tables and charts from the Microstrategy platform, and content from current information sources such as transaction processing systems, Enterprise Resource Planning systems, databases, XML files, and web servers.
- What formatting can be applied to the information that is sent out by Microstrategy Narrowcast Server?
- 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.
- To which devices can Microstrategy Narrowcast Server deliver information?
- Narrowcast Server can deliver information to email, mobile phones, pagers, faxes, PDAs, intranet and extranet web portals. Businesses can also build and plug in their own Information Transmission Module to support their own devices.
- How does the Microstrategy Narrowcast Server support enterprise wide mission critical applications?
- Microstrategy Narrowcast Server's world-class clustering and fail-over ensures support for mission-critical 24x7 systems. Rigorous in-house testing has proven that Narrowcast Server can personalize and deliver millions of messages a day. The system tracks fail-over down to each message.
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Microstrategy Interview Questions - part 11- What types of flat files does the report cache on the MicroStrategy Intelligence Server 7.0 create? Are they accessible from other tools?
- Report caches stored on disk on the MicroStrategy Intelligence Server 7.0 are in a preprocessed, proprietary format. Therefore, they are not accessible by means other than the MicroStrategy COM API. Datamarting is implemented in MicroStrategy Intelligence Server 7.1 to address this requirement. Element and Metadata Object caches only exist in memory and are not stored on disk, unlike Report caches.
- Can a SQL generation request be cached?
- Yes, a SQL generation request can be cached. The next time the same report is run, the SQL is retrieved from the cache instead of being generate at the runtime.
- Is there a setting that can control the client side cache?
- There are no exposed settings regarding the client side cache.
- Is there an expiration time for the different caches?
- For the report cache default, the expiration time is 24 hours, but it is configurable up to 999,999 hours. For element cache and object cache there is no expiration time setting. The only ways of removing them are either purging the caches from the project configuration or restarting the MicroStrategy Intelligence Server.
- Will Cache files be created when Caching is turned off at the Project Configuration?
- If the History List (Inbox) is enabled, cache files will still be created.
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Microstrategy Interview Questions - part 10- Should you have DATE as ID attribute form?
- What is compound key?
- What is a fact and an attribute?
- What are Factless facts?
- What are Transformations? Is there any transformations implemented in your project?
- Explain Fact Structure(types, one by one)
- Explain Level Extension. How it is used in your project?
- Explain Fact Relation.
- Explain Fact Degradation.
- What is Compound Key Attribute? Give example from your project.
- Can you update a table in Warehouse using MicroStrategy?
- How will you resolve an issue when (by chance) an aggregate table at higher level has a higher LTS than an aggregate table at lower level?
- What happens if LTS is high for a higher level table?
- What are the criteria used by the MicroStrategy SQL Engine to build the join tree of a report’s SQL?
- Can MicroStrategy logical primary keys and the true (warehouse) primary keys differ?
- Oracle has a pseudo column named ROWID which is not “directly” exposed to front-end? Can this table be used in MicroStrategy? Why one would do that?
- Can you create Schema objects in 2 tier connection? Is it recommended?
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Microstrategy Interview Questions - part 9166. What is Microstrategy Desktop?
Microstrategy Desktop™ is a Windows client-server software application that provides integrated monitoring, reporting, and analysis capabilities.
167. What does Microstrategy Desktop allow users to do?
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.
168. What can users do with the information they access using Microstrategy Desktop?
Users can analyze the information using standard aggregations and more sophisticated functions such as average, summation, percentage contribution, standard deviation and net present value. Investigative reporting, using pivoting, sorting, slicing, and drilling to more detail, can be performed with simple mouse clicks. Users can also format reports to their specifications and view the data as intuitive charts and graphs to identify trends and anomalies quickly.
169. What are the benefits of using Microstrategy Desktop?
Users can obtain critical information immediately without waiting for IT departments to create reports. The software is easy to use and provides context sensitive help, thus eliminating the need for extensive support and maintenance staff.
170. Are the reports created using Microstrategy Desktop available to other products such as Microstrategy Web?
Yes. Reports created using Microstrategy Desktop are immediately available to other Microstrategy products because of our centralized metadata architecture.
171. Can Microstrategy Desktop access SAP data?
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.
172. Can Microstrategy Desktop access operational data systems?
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.
173. How fast is the performance on Microstrategy Desktop?
Microstrategy Desktop provides instant access and analysis of information. This high performance is enabled through Intelligence Cubes™, caches, incremental fetches and advanced analytic features.
174. How long does it take to learn Microstrategy Desktop?
Microstrategy Desktop preserves the look and feel of popular desktop software such as Microsoft® Windows® Explorer and Microsoft Office. As such, users are immediately comfortable with Microstrategy Desktop. A customized interface using HTML can be created, simplifying navigation and report execution.
175. Can I make my data and graphs look professional?
Yes. Users can format their data into appealing reports using various formatting styles and graphs for maximum visual impact. Users can choose from more than 30 different charting options to present information in the best layout possible.
176. Is it possible to display multiple reports, images and information on the same page?
Yes, users can easily combine tables, images, graphs and other information onto the same page in a document. Visually impressive and compelling documents can be printed out and shared with corporate executives. Business users can now rearrange the organization of any report with simple drag and drop actions or by clicking on the new toolbar icons to get entirely new views of the data, all from the same report and without requiring assistance from IT.
177. What printing capabilities are available in Microstrategy Desktop?
Microstrategy Desktop offers advanced printing capabilities. Features include repeating row/column headers, customizable headers and footers, and a comprehensive page setup menu. Users can preview reports before sending it to the printer.
178. What subtotaling features does Microstrategy Desktop contain?
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.
179. What are the minimum requirements for Microstrategy Desktop?
Minimum requirements are a computer with at least a 450MHZ Pentium- compatible CPU, 256MB of RAM and 500MB of hard disk.
180. Is Microstrategy Desktop available in other languages?
Microstrategy Desktop is available in English, French, German, Spanish, Korean, Italian, Swedish, Japanese and Portuguese. |
Microstrategy Interview Questions - part 8- What is the difference between RW document and HTML document?
- What’s smart metric?
- What is a bridge/relationship table?
- How will you resolve double counting in M-M relationship between two attributes?
- What is a CUBE?
- What are differences between View Filter and Report Filter?
- What are the different types of Filters available? Explain each with example.
- What is derived metrics? Explain the example from your project.
- What are Prompted Filters or cascaded prompts?
- How will you customize the display for Null Values?
- Can you enable/disable the thresholds based on some condition/prompt answers?
- In a Document, there are 5 reports and 5 out of them need to have a prompt so that 10 user can select first day of the week for which user want to execute the report. How many prompts would be required to bemade?
- What’s XML Cache?
- What’s a Bulk export report?
- Can you have a prompt in free form SQL report?
- What will happen when the network connection between the webserver and one of the clustered I-server is lost? Will report run smoothly?
- Can you prioritize report execution?
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Microstrategy Interview Questions - part 7- What is metadata?
- What is two-tier connection?
- What is three-tier connection?
- What is difference between 2, 3 and 4 tier connections?
- How do you achieve schema object version control (similar to VSS)?
- What are different kinds of objects in MicroStrategy?
- What’s fact table?
- Where is Administrator’s password stored? Is it stored in encrypted?
- Why do we use dimensional modeling in DW? Why not Relational?
- What is a batch?
- Differences between ROLAP, MOLAP and HOLAP?
- What is ETL?
- What types of DW’s are most common?
- How many MSTR projects have you worked?
- What are the types of MSTR objects available?
- Explain the step-by-step technical approach after you get the Requirements from the Client.
- What’s a System call error? Have you seen Object variable error?
- Have you ever manually edited the metadata? why?
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Microstrategy Interview Questions - part 6- What is ScanMD?
- What is MD Doctor?
- What is clustering?
- How will you reset password of all users?
- What are different modes you can run I-Server?
- How can you make sure that I-Server would be running even if the application mode has crashed and how to get back the instance?
- What are various authentication modes?
- How can you configure WH authentication?
- Does DLS affect MicroStrategy? What you need to do incorporate it?
- What is Object Manager?
- What will you do when I-Server crashes?
- What will you do if your Administrator has forgotten password or the account is locked?
- How can you monitor the error received while running I-Server and report?
- Attribute role, Security role, Security filter and Access control?
- How to create an event based schedule?
- Can MicroStrategy be installed on Solaris or UNIX w/o Root access? Can such a server be (re)started?
- If you have a Quad core CPU and MSTR license to use CPUs, can you set to use two particular cores dedicatedly for I-Server (As other core may have been programmed for some other dedicated work)
- Drawbacks on 4GT switch?
- Can you cap the number of reports run at a time by users? What happens when this limit is breached?
- Can you some how disable Web users to use only one I-Server?
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Microstrategy Interview Questions - part 5- What is Freeform SQL?
- What is an OLAP cube report?
- How to apply OLAP?
- How to handle many to many relationships?
- If there are diff. customers how to define the data?
- How to create dual key(dual key in composite key)
- What is VLDB based performance tuning?
- Have u used stored procedures to invoke MSTR?
- What is compound metrics(is m1 + m2 a compound metrics)
- What is Hetreogenous mapping?
- How to apply function in an attribute?
- What is Smart Totals?
- What is a Smart Metric?
- How to change default total for a metric?
- How to apply a function inside a filter?
- How to apply a compilation function inside a filter?
- Can dimensionality of a metric be changed in run-time?
- What is the drawback of custom group?
- How to change date format(example from US to EUROPEAN)
- What is IServer clustering?
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Microstrategy Interview Questions - part 476. How long does it take to get Microstrategy Desktop up and running?
Microstrategy Desktop installs in minutes and automatically presents a list of available Microstrategy Intelligence Servers. Within an hour, the installation and setup are completed.
77. How does Microstrategy Desktop integrate with the rest of the Microstrategy platform?
Microstrategy Desktop is the intuitive client-server interface used by business analysts and application developers. Microstrategy Desktop interacts with the Intelligence Server to build metrics, create and format reports, and retrieve timely, accurate information to the desktop to enhance the decision-making process.
78. What security is provided with Microstrategy Desktop?
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.
79. To what extend can Microstrategy Desktop be personalized?
Each Microstrategy Desktop user has a security profile defined by their administrator. This profile controls access to application functionality, specific reports or particular data for individual users or groups of users. The Desktop interface will adapt and display only what this user is allowed to see.
80. Is the Microstrategy MDX engine certified by SAP?
Yes. This new Dynamic MDX Engine generates optimized MDX syntax that is fully certified with SAP BW using SAP's high performance BAPI interfaces.
81. Can users join data across SAP BW Info Cubes and Query Cubes?
Yes. Users can use Microstrategy Desktop to create reports that access SAP data and join data across SAP BW Info Cubes and Query Cubes as well as access multiple instances of SAP BW at once.
82. Can Microstrategy Desktop join data across heterogeneous data sources?
Yes. Microstrategy 8 extends the Microstrategy data modeling flexibility to include integrated views of data across heterogeneous data stores. By mapping conforming dimensions from different sources, Microstrategy Desktop can automatically join data from multiple different sources in the same report document. Data can come from any source accessible by Microstrategy 8, including the data warehouse, data marts, SAP BW, and any number of operational system databases
83. Does Microstrategy provide predictive modeling capabilities commonly available in data mining tools?
Yes. Microstrategy 8 can calculate four of the primary data mining functions including neural network algorithms, clustering algorithms, regression algorithms, and tree algorithms.
84. Can Microstrategy incorporate best-of-breed data mining insight into mainstream business reports and analysis?
Yes. Microstrategy 8 has extended its analytic engine with "Data Mining Services" capability that allows reports and analyses to include predictive capabilities in every Microstrategy report or analysis. Microstrategy 8 includes the new ability to import data mining models directly from best-of-breed data mining products from vendors like IBM, Teradata, SAS, and SPSS using the new PMML or predictive modeling mark-up language standard.
85. Can Microstrategy Desktop export data to other software applications?
You can export information from Microstrategy Desktop to text files, Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Access and HTML files. The formatting of the tables and data are preserved when you export to these file formats.
86. What data sources does Microstrategy Desktop support?
You can access data in all the major databases including Oracle, IBM DB2, Informix, NCR Teradata, Microsoft Access, Microsoft SQL Server, Red Brick, Sybase and Non-Stop SQL.
87. To save time, can many reports be run at the same time?
Microstrategy Desktop can execute multiple reports simultaneously. Report results are saved in a personal History folder when ready.
88. Can reports be executed in off-peak periods?
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.
89. What is Microstrategy OLAP Services?
Microstrategy OLAP Services is an extension to Microstrategy Intelligence Server that allows Microstrategy Web and Desktop users to manipulate Intelligent Cubes™. With OLAP Services end users can add or remove report objects, add derived metrics and modify the filter -- all with speed-of-thought response time against Intelligent Cubes. OLAP Services enables full multi-dimensional OLAP analysis within Intelligent Cubes, while retaining users' ability to seamlessly drill through to the full breadth and depth of the data warehouse.
90. What are the Intelligent Cubes used by OLAP Services?
Intelligent Cubes are user or administrator created multi-dimensional cubes that operate within Microstrategy Intelligence Server™. On Microstrategy's BI platform, creating an Intelligent Cube is as easy as creating a report. Intelligent Cubes enable Microstrategy to combine the speed and interactivity of multi-dimensional OLAP analysis and the analytical power and depth of relational OLAP.
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