Skip to main content

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 ComponentKey Module
Intelligence ServerQuery Execution
Data Preparation
XML generation
Web ServerWeb processes

Network
ClientClient 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
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:
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Best practices for using Distribution Services in Microstrategy

Best practices for using Distribution Services MicroStrategy recommends the following best practices when scheduling Distribution Services subscriptions, in addition to the best practices given above: • For best results, follow the steps listed in  High-level checklist to set up a report delivery system . • PDF, plain text, and CSV file formats generally offer the fastest delivery performance. Performance can vary, depending on items including your hardware, operating system, network connectivity, and so on. • The performance of the print delivery method depends on the speed of the printer. • When sending very large reports or documents: ▫ Enable the zipping feature for the subscription so that files are smaller. ▫ Use bulk export instead of the CSV file format. Details on bulk exporting are in the  Reports  chapter of the  Advanced Reporting Guide . ▫ Schedule subscription deliveries to occur when your Intelligence Server is experiencing low ...
1 comment
Read more

Derived metric based on attribute values

Derived metric based on attribute values Here is how could create and display data correctly on using below simple steps.  Create a report with Category, Subcategory and Revenue. Create New Metric in a report or VI.  Case((Category@ID = 1), Revenue, 0) Booksand Name it as Revenue for  where 2 is Category ID for "Books"  Report will display result as below.  Result for new metric is blank. Now to fix this create a new Derived metric on Category attribute first with formula as  Max(Category) {~ }  and calling Books Now Edit the "Revenue for Books metric and Replace Category@ID with this new Books metric formula would looks like this  Case((Books = 1), Revenue, 0).  Report result would now display as expected as shown below
2 comments
Read more

Prompt-in-prompt(Nested Prompts) in Microstrategy

Prompt-in-prompt(Nested Prompts) in  Microstrategy Nested prompts allows you to create one prompt based on the other and other bases on another, nested prompts allows us to prompt the highest level(Like year) to middle level(like Quarter, then to the low level(like Month). Here you can see how to  create a 3-level deep nested prompt that will prompt the user to select a year, then a quarter within that year, then a month within that quarter. Prompt-in-prompt is a feature in which the answer to one prompt is used to define another prompt. This feature is only implemented for element list prompts . The following procedure describes how to achieve this: Create the highest level filter. This is a filter which contains a prompt on an attribute element list. Create a filter on the attribute "Year." Click "prompt on attribute element list" and click "Next" through the rest of the screens to accept the default values. Do not set any additio...
3 comments
Read more

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...
4 comments
Read more

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:...
2 comments
Read more

Types of prompts in Microstrategy

Types of prompts in Microstrategy The different types of prompts allow you to create a  prompt  for nearly every part of a report. Prompts can be used in many objects including reports, filters, metrics, and custom groups, but all prompts require user interaction when the report is executed. The correct prompt type to create depends on what report objects you want users to be able to base a filter on to filter data, as described in the list below. Filter definition prompts   allow users to determine how the report's data is filtered, based on one of the following objects: Attributes in a hierarchy : Users can select prompt answers from one or more attribute elements from one or more attributes. The attribute elements that they select are used to filter data displayed on the report. This prompt lets you give users the largest number of attribute elements to choose from when they answer the prompt to define their filtering criteria. For example, on a repor...
1 comment
Read more

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...
3 comments
Read more

Microstrategy Document Autotext macros:

Autotext  code/macros in  Microstrategy Document/dashboard This is a list of the available auto text macros that the Report Services Document engine recognizes. The following auto text codes allow you to add  document variable information to your document. These auto text codes are automatically replaced by information about the document. Auto text codes for MSTR document/dashboard:  AUTOTEXT DESCRIPTION   {&PAGE}  Display the current page.  {&NPAGES}  Display the total number of pages.  {&DATETIME}  Display the current date and time.  {&USER}  Display the user name that is executing the Report Services Document.  {&DOCUMENT}  Display the document name.  {&DOCUMENTID}  Display the document ID.  {&DESCRIPTION}  Display the document description.  {&PROJECT}  Display the project name.  {&EXECUTIONTIME}  Dis...
2 comments
Read more

Microstrategy Release Types and Scheduling

Microstrategy Release Types and Scheduling Organizations that use MicroStrategy have asked for a more frequent and predictable platform release schedule—and we listened! We want you to be able to adopt the latest innovations more regularly while having the ability to budget for your long-term upgrade roadmap. Recently announced by CTO Tim Lang in his newsletter, that’s why we’re adopting an annual cadence for future platform releases. This means that our upcoming platform release (v11.1) hits the streets in Q4 2018, followed by another platform release in Q4 2019. PLATFORM RELEASE Interval:  Annually every twelve (12) months in December Who:  Entire customer base What:  Focus on production level security, stability, and performance defect fixes for all customers. Expectation:  Customer has chosen platform path and wants product stability without new enhancements. Support:  Three (3) years, patches for approved P1 defects, an...
1 comment
Read more

Fiscal Week, Fiscal Month, Fiscal Quarter and Fiscal Year calculations in Microstrategy

Fiscal Week, Fiscal Month, Fiscal Quarter and Fiscal Year calculations in Microstrategy FiscalWeek Returns the numeric position of a week within a fiscal year, for a given  input date. This function is useful in financial reporting when the start of the fiscal year is different than the start of the calendar year. Syntax FiscalWeek< firstWeekDay ,  firstMonth >( Date / Time ) Where: • Date / Time  is the input date or timestamp. • firstWeekDay  (default value is 1) is a parameter that determines which day of the week is considered as the first day of the week. You can type an integer value from 1 to 7, with 1 representing Sunday, 2 representing Monday, and so on until 7 representing Saturday. • firstMonth  (default value is 1) is a parameter that determines which month is considered as the start of the fiscal year. You can type an integer value from 1 to 12, with 1 representing January, 2 representing February, and so on until ...
1 comment
Read more