Dashboard performance troubleshooting in MicroStrategy 10

Dashboard performance troubleshooting in MicroStrategy 10.x

Details of Document Execution Request, introduce the Performance Troubleshooting Cycle, and present links to other resources with detailed steps for troubleshooting specific components that may affect performance.

To begin, the architecture for dashboard execution is diagrammed here:

MicroStrategy Intelligence Server
When an end user makes a Document Execution Request through any client (a web browser via MicroStrategy Web, the MicroStrategy Desktop/Developer client, the MicroStrategy Mobile app, or the MicroStrategy Office client), the request is sent to the MicroStrategy Intelligence Server, which processes the request and prepares the response.

The MicroStrategy Intelligence Server will execute all children datasets on the dashboard by either generating SQL and running this against the data warehouse, or by fetching data from a cache. The Intelligence Server will first analyze all the templates, then determine which datasets the metrics are from, extend these datasets with runtime relations if necessary, aggregate the metric to desired level, join these datasets on the common attributes, and generate the final view.

After final result for the grid has been assembled, the Intelligence Server will retrieve the design structure for the dashboard either by querying the metadata for the dashboard definition. Subsequently, the Intelligence Server will then generate the appropriate response type for rendering the dashboard. For Office documents, dashboards executed in DHTML view modes, and Flash dashboards, the Intelligence Server will generate XML, and for PDF documents, the Intelligence Server will generate PDF. For Mobile dashboards, the Intelligence Server will generate a binary in addition to XML.

When the response generation is complete, the Intelligence Server will send the response to different components depending on which client the original Document Execution Request was initiated from. For requests made from a web browser via MicroStrategy Web, the MicroStrategy Mobile app, or the MicroStrategy Office client, the Intelligence Server will send the response to the MicroStrategy Web Server, the MicroStrategy Mobile Server, or the MicroStrategy Web Services Server respectively for further processing. For requests made from the MicroStrategy Desktop/Developer client, the Intelligence Server will send the response to the Desktop/Developer client directly without going through an additional server.

MicroStrategy Web Server
End users may render dashboards executed through MicroStrategy Web in DHTML view modes, Flash mode, or PDF. When the MicroStrategy Web Server receives the response from the Intelligence Server for one of these requests, it will transform the Intelligence Server response to the appropriate HTTP response suitable for displaying in the end user browser.

For dashboards executed in DHTML view modes, the Web Server will transform the Intelligence Server XML response to HTML.
For Flash dashboards, the Web Server will first upload a Flash dashboard viewer component to the end user browser (called DashboardViewer.swf, by default located here on the Web Server machine: C:\Program Files (x86)\MicroStrategy\Web ASPx\swf\DashboardViewer.swf), then forward the Intelligence Server XML response to the DashboardViewer in order for the end user browser to render.
For PDF documents, the Web Server will forward the Intelligence Server PDF response to the end user browser directly.

MicroStrategy Mobile and Web Services Servers
Dashboards executed through the MicroStrategy Mobile app must go through the MicroStrategy Mobile Server, and dashboards executed through the MicroStrategy Office Client must go through the MicroStrategy Web Services server.
For dashboards executed through Mobile, when the MicroStrategy Mobile Server receives the XML and binary response from the Intelligence Server, it will forward this response to the end user mobile client for further processing.

The Performance Troubleshooting Cycle

The above chart illustrates the Performance Troubleshooting Cycle. The goal of the cycle is to improve performance by identifying which components are acting as bottlenecks, then making the appropriate modifications to these components specifically, the environment as a whole, or the dashboard itself.

Monitoring

The first step of the cycle is to quantify the performance by measuring the time spent in each of the components that are part of a Document Execution Request, as described in the preceding sections. The table below summarizes a few key modules that commonly consume the most amount of time during a dashboard execution:

MicroStrategy Component	Key Module
Intelligence Server	Query Execution
	Data Preparation
	XML generation
Web Server	Web processes
	Network
Client	Client rendering

To measure the time spent in these components, refer to the following resources:

Intelligence Server and Client

Query Execution - Reference MicroStrategy Product Documentation > System Administration Guide > Chapter 5 for a complete list on how to monitor Job Execution and system usage

Data Preparation, XML Generation and Client rendering - KB30914: Overview of Profiling MicroStrategy Documents

Web Server

Web processes - KB10211: What are MicroStrategy Web statistics and how can they be activated?

Optimizing
After bottlenecks have been identified, certain component-level settings can be adjusted to optimize performance. However, since MicroStrategy deployments will typically rely on third-party components, several component-level settings may be outside the scope of MicroStrategy Technical Support but will nonetheless effect MicroStrategy performance. An example of this is an Intelligence Server may perform slowler on a machine with relatively fewer hardware resources (RAM, CPU speed, disk read/write speed, etc.) than a machine with more resources. As another example, an Intelligence Server may also perform slower on a machine with plentiful resources but many other processes running simultaneously in the background compared to a machine dedicated for just the Intelligence Server process. As a final example, an Intelligence Server and a Web Server may generate a document body quickly but a client browser may not be powerful enough to render this document in a short time period.
To adjust component-level settings specific to MicroStrategy, refer to the following resources:

Comments

MicroStrategy URL API Parameters

MicroStrategy URL Structure The following table summarizes the root URL structure used for every request to MicroStrategy Web. Environment Main Application URL Administration URL J2EE http://webserver/MicroStrategy/servlet/mstrWeb http://webserver/MicroStrategy/servlet/mstrWebAdmin .NET http://webserver/MicroStrategy/asp/Main.aspx http://webserver/MicroStrategy/asp/Admin.aspx Every request sent to MicroStrategy Web calls a central controller. Parameters are appended to Main.aspx or mstrWeb (in a .NET and J2EE environment, respectively) to indicate to the controller how the request should be internally forwarded and handled. The following examples show a URL for accessing a MicroStrategy folder when the user does not have an existing session. The URL contains not only the parameters needed to connect to MicroStrategy Web, but also the parameters needed to log on and create a session. J2EE environment: <a href="http:...

Create an alert-based subscription in MicroStrategy Distribution Services

Create an alert-based subscription in MicroStrategy Distribution Services on Web Subscription to a report or Report Services document which will be executed when a certain conditional threshold is met based on another executing report. For example, a scheduled report executes which shows the Revenue by day for the past week. If the Revenue on any one day falls below a certain value, a subscription to another report or Report Services document can be triggered and delivered to a recipient. An alert based subscription can only be created directly on a report; however, another report or Report Services document can be delivered when the alert based subscription is triggered. Note: you need a grid report to create an alert and you cannot create if you want to create on a document with text boxes. The following example will walk through the basic steps on how to setup a subscription based on an alert like this: Follow the brief steps bel...

Reduce Intelligent Cube Size By Finding Intelligent Cube Objects Which Are Not In Use

Reduce Intelligent Cube Size By Finding Intelligent Cube Objects Which Are Not In Use If the i-cubes can potentially be reduced in size an audit can be performed on the cube objects to see which cube objects are not being used by any of the view reports, documents, or dossiers. The below are examples for a few of the common metadata database platforms . NOTE: To perform this audit, queries are run against the MicroStrategy metadata database. Ensure a metadata backup is taken prior to performing the below actions. Steps: 1) Identify the object ID of the Intelligent cube to be audited by checking the objects Property window 2) Identify the object ID of the project this cube exists within by opening the Project Configuration Sample Cube ID = CFAF1E9B4D53990698C42E87C7AF2EB5 Sample Project ID = B7CA92F04B9FAE8D941C3E9B7E0CD754 3) Run the below SQL against the metadata database by replacing the Cube ID and Project ID within the respective ...

Create a transaction services photo uploader

Create a transaction services photo uploader 1. Create a new table "photo_upload" in Tutorial warehouse database (the default location: C:\Program Files\MicroStrategy\Tutorial Reporting\TUTORIAL_DATA_7200.mdb), as shown below: 2. The 'photo_upload' table has to be pre-populated with *exactly* 10 rows of data, the values for the 'ID' column should be 1-10 and the values for the 'uploaded' column should all be 0 3. In MicroStrategy Desktop, create a freeform report "R1" based on the new table "photo_upload" in Tutorial data created at step 1, as shown below: SELECT Location, Description, ID, uploaded, numbers FROM PHOTO_UPLOAD 4. Create another table for transaction insert SQL. Make sure to create an 'autonumber' type ID as primary key for this table, or auto_increment ID for different DBs. 5. Create...

Microstrategy "Error type: Odbc error. Odbc operation attempted

"Error type: Odbc error. Odbc operation attempted: SQLExecDirect. [HYT00:0: on SQLHANDLE] [MicroStrategy][ODBC Oracle Wire Protocol driver]Timeout expired" is shown when executing reports from Web When users are trying to execute some reports in MicroStrategy web in particular, they may receive the Error “SQL Generation Complete Index out of range” and “Timeout expired” error as shown below: Possible Causes: One possible cause is that the MicroStrategy Intelligence Server using a cached database connection that was already dropped by the RDBMS. To resolve this: Admin should delete the database connection caches and create a new DSNs in case they are sharing DSNs to connect to different databases. In addition, change the settings for the ‘Connection lifetime’ and the ‘Connection idle time out’. Follow the steps below to perform the mentioned changes and verify the report after each step and some of the settings require i-server r...

Scheduling a report or document to be sent to an FTP in MSTR

Scheduling a report or document to be sent to an FTP server You can have a report or document automatically delivered to a location on your FTP server on a specific schedule. To do so, you must subscribe to the report or document, as described in the steps below. You can customize your subscription by typing macros in the File Name , Sub-folder , or Zip File Name fields. These macros are automatically replaced with the appropriate text when the report or document is delivered. For example, you create a subscription to a document. If you type {&Project} in the File Name field, the name of the project in which the document is saved is displayed in the name of the document when it is delivered. • This procedure assumes that an administrator has already added your FTP server as a new device in Developer. Steps to do so are included in the System Administrator Help . To send a report or document to an FTP server on a schedule ...

exact string when searching for elements in an element prompt in MicroStrategy

When a user types in keywords to tries to find element names in an element prompt, the search returns all objects containing the keywords in MicroStrategy Developer 9.4.x-10.x. However, the user would like to search for the exact phrase. It is suggested to use quotes to get exact phrase when there is a space between. Like "Black Panther" Using the MicroStrategy Tutorial Project as an example, a user wishes to search for an item named Minolta Maxxum Camera. The search results for Minolta Maxxum Camera return all items containing any or all of those words, as shown below: CAUSE: This occurs due to the search defaulting to 'ORing' the search terms. This means that any or all keywords that match the strings will be returned. The SQL for this search is shown below: SELECT ITEM_NAME FROM LU_ITEM WHERE (ITEM_NAME LIKE '%Minolta%' OR ITEM_NAME LIKE '%Maxxum%' OR ITEM_NAME LIKE '%Camera%') ACTION: To match an exact string, use...

Predictive modelling in Data Science using Microstrategy

Creating a predictive modelling in MicroStrategy MicroStrategy Data Mining Services has been evolving to include more data mining algorithms and functionality. One key feature is MicroStrategy Developer’s Training Metric Wizard. The Training Metric Wizard can be used to create several different types of predictive models including linear and exponential regression, logistic regression, decision tree, cluster, time series, and association rules. Linear and exponential regression The linear regression data mining technique should be familiar to you if you have ever tried to extrapolate or interpolate data, tried to find the line that best fits a series of data points, or used Microsoft Excel’s LINEST or LOGEST functions. Regression analyzes the relationship between several predictive inputs, or independent variables, and a dependent variable that is to be predicted. Regression finds the line that best fits the data, with a minimum of error. For example, you have a dataset ...

Sort by metric subtotals and attribute elements together in Microstrategy

Sort by metric subtotals and attribute elements together in Microstrategy Users may observer that when creating a report that contains advance sorting with a metric that contains subtotals the report results appear to be only sorted by the metric values specified. Even if a sort is specified for the attribute elements on the report, the results in the report appear as if the attribute sort was not defined. In the screenshot below, the results for a report are shown where the Advance Sorting option 'Sort metrics hierarchically using: Total' is selected. For this report, a second sort is defined on the Customer Gender - 'DESC' form, users would notice that the ordering of the this attribute is not consistent: The sort definition for the report is shown below: CAUSE: When the option to 'Sort metrics hierarchically using: Total' option is selected, the MicroStrategy Engine first sorts the results based on the Total values, and then sorts th...

Super Cubes in MicroStrategy 2019

Super Cubes in MicroStrategy 2019 Beginning in MicroStrategy 11.0 and 2019, users will notice objects referred to as " Super Cubes ". Super Cubes are simply a renaming of what was previously referred to as MTDI (Multi Table Data Import) Cubes. Note that only the naming convention has changed, as the functionality remains the same . This name change is visible in MicroStrategy Workstation and MicroStrategy Web. In MicroStrategy Workstation, right click on any cube created via Data Import and select Properties . The object Type is listed as Super Cube: This can also be seen when editing or authoring a dossier. In your Datasets panel, hover over the name of your dataset. The tooltip will show the dataset type listed as a Super Cube.

Microstrategy Analytics

Search This Blog