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:...

mstrio – Python and R wrappers for the MicroStrategy

mstrio – Python and R wrappers for the MicroStrategy REST APIs Connecting to MicroStrategy Create a connection to the Intelligence Server using Connection() and  connect() in Python and R, respectively. Required arguments for the   Connection()  function are the URL for the MicroStrategy REST API server, MicroStrategy Intelligence Server username and password, as well as the MicroStrategy project name. By default, the  connect()  function anticipates your MicroStrategy Intelligence Server username and password. LDAP authentication is also supported. Use the optional argument  login_mode=16  in the  connect()  function for LDAP authentication. Extract data from cubes and reports To extract data from MicroStrategy cubes and reports, use the get_cube()  and  get_report() functions. Use...

Internationalization Design Technics

Microstrategy Internationalization Design Technics MicroStrategy supports data internationalization through two different techniques. You can either provide translated data through the use of extra tables and columns, or you can provide separate databases to store your translated data. These techniques are described below: You can support data internationalization in your database by using separate tables and columns to store your translated data. You can use various combinations of tables and columns to support and identify the translated data in your database. To support displaying the name of each month in multiple languages, you can include the translated names in a separate column, one for each required language, within the same table. Each column can use a suffix to identify that the column contains translated data for a certain language. The same LU_MONTH_OF_YEAR table with translated data for the Spanish and German langua...

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...

Case functions Microstrategy

Ca se functions Microstrategy Case functions return specified data in a SQL query based on the evaluation of user-defined conditions. In general, a user specifies a list of conditions and corresponding return values. Case This function evaluates multiple expressions until a condition is determined to be true, then returns a corresponding value. If all conditions are false, a default value is returned. Case can be used for categorizing data based on multiple conditions. This is a single-value function. Syntax Case ( Condition1 , ReturnValue1 , Condition2 , ReturnValue2 ,..., DefaultValue ) Example Case(([Total Revenue] < 300000), 0, ([Total Revenue] < 600000), 1, 2) sum(Case (Day@DESC in (“Sat”,”Sun”), Sales, 0) {~+} Sum(Case(Category@DESC In("Books","Electronics"),Revenue,0)){~+} CaseV (case vector) CaseV evaluates a single metric and returns different values according to the results. It can be used to perfo...

Microstrategy Dossiers explained

Microstrategy Dossiers With the release of MicroStrategy 10.9, we’ve taken a leap forward in our dashboarding capabilities by simplifying the user experience, adding storytelling, and collaboration.MSTR has evolved dashboards to the point that they are more than dashboards - they are interactive, collaborative analytic stories . Ultimately, it was time to go beyond dashboards, both in concept and in name, and so the've renamed VI dashboards to ‘ dossiers ’. Dossiers can be created by using the new Desktop product or Workstation or simply from the Web interface which replaces Visual Insights. All the existing visual Insights dashboards will be converted to Dossiers With MicroStrategy 10.9, there was an active focus on making it easier to build dashboards for the widest audience of end users. To achieve this, some key new capabilities were added that make it easier to author, read, interact and collaborate on dashboards ...

Settings for Outer Join between metrics in MicroStrategy

Settings for Outer Join between metrics in MicroStrategy MicroStrategy adopts multi-pass logic to determine the execution plan for a report. This means that every metric is evaluated in separate SQL passes. Outer Joins come into play when MicroStrategy Engine merges the results from all SQL passes into one report. For a multi-pass report, different Outer Join behaviors can give the user completely different results. In addition, report metrics can be of different types which can, in some cases, influence the result of the outer join. In MicroStrategy, there are two settings that users can access to control Outer Join behavior : Formula Join Type and Metric Join Type . Metric Join Type: VLDB Setting at Database Instance Level Report and Template Levels Report Editor > Data > Report Data Options Metric Level Metric editor > Tools > Metric Join Type Control Join between Metrics Formula Join Type: Only at Compound/Split...

Best practices for scheduling jobs and administrative tasks in Microstrategy

Best practices for scheduling jobs and administrative tasks Below are the recommended best practices when scheduling jobs and administrative tasks in MSTR: Executing simultaneous reports can strain system resources. If you have many reports or tasks that need to be executed on the same time-based schedule, consider creating several similar schedules that trigger 15 minutes apart. For example, one schedule triggers at 8 AM every Monday, and another triggers at 8:15 AM. To prevent users from scheduling many simultaneous reports, you can prevent users from scheduling jobs using a schedule by editing the schedule’s Access Control List (ACL). To do this, in the Schedule Manager, right-click the schedule and select Properties , then select the Security tab in the Properties dialog box, and make sure that only users who can use the schedule have Modify or Full Control access to the schedule. Establish reasonable limits on how many scheduled jobs are allowed. For details on ...

Export a Report Services document to Excel with formatting using URL API

Export a Report Services document to Excel with formatting using URL API in MSTR Web In order to export a document in excel format using the URL API, the executionMode must be set to 4. If excutionMode is not provided in the URL, by default PDF will be used as executionMode. Below are the list of parameters that the URL must contain in order to execute correctly. evt= 3069 src= Main.aspx.3069 executionMode= 4 documentID= 7E1644CA424F482DA811569FCE8127FF( Replace the document Id with your document ID) Sample URL for .NET environment: http://WebServerName/MicroStrategy/asp/Main.aspx?evt=3069&src=Main.aspx. 3069 &executionMode= 4 &documentID= 7E1644CA424F482DA811569FCE8127FF

Microstrategy Analytics

Search This Blog