Skip to main content

Microstrategy Dashboard performance improvements steps

Microstrategy  Dashboard performance improvements steps:

Many times, causes of poor performance can be simplified to specific components.
To troubleshoot performance issues, users must identify these components, then make the appropriate modifications to the environment and/or to the MicroStrategy dashboard to reduce bottlenecks.

Dashboard execution stages can be represented below:


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 then join all the dataset results into one master table, called the virtual dataset or master dataset, to store in memory. The master dataset includes the union of all attributes in the dataset report, as well as one column for each metric in the document.
After the master dataset has been assembled, the Intelligence Server will retrieve the design structure for the dashboard either by querying the metadata for the dashboard definition, or by fetching the definition from a cache. 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.
For dashboards executed through Office, when the MicroStrategy Web Services server receives the XML response from the Intelligence Server, it will forward this response to the end user Microsoft Office 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
  • Query Execution - Reference MicroStrategy Product Documentation > System Administration Guide > Chapter 5for a complete list on how to monitor Job Execution and system usage
  • Data Preparation and XML Generation - KB30914: Overview of Profiling MicroStrategy Documents
Web Server
Client

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:

Intelligence Server
Web Server
Client

Comments

  1. Very good points you wrote here..Great stuff...I think you've made some truly interesting points.Keep up the good work. Dashboard Reporting Software

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Microstrategy Custom number formatting symbols

Custom number formatting symbols If none of the built-in number formats meet your needs, you can create your own custom format in the Number tab of the Format Cells dialog box. Select  Custom  as the Category and create the format using the number format symbols listed in the table below. Each custom format can have up to four optional sections, one each for: Positive numbers Negative numbers Zeros Text Each section is optional. Separate the sections by semicolons, as shown in the example below: #,###;(#,###);0;"Error: Entry must be numeric" For more examples, see  Custom number formatting examples . To jump to a section of the formatting symbol table, click one of the following: Numeric symbols Character/text symbols Date and time symbols Text color symbols Currency symbols Conditional symbols Numeric symbols For details on how numeric symbols apply to the Big Decimal data type, refer to the  Project Design Guide . ...

OLAP features in Microstrategy

OLAP features in Microstrategy MSTR  OLAP Services uses Intelligent Cube Technology—an in-memory version of report data that can 1 About MicroStrategy OLAP Services  can be manipulated by the MicroStrategy Analytical Engine. MicroStrategy Desktop, Web, and Office users can slice and dice data in reports within Intelligent Cubes without having to re-execute SQL against the data warehouse.  Many of the standard OLAP features that MicroStrategy provides out of the box, such as: Page-by Pivoting Sorting Subtotals Banding Aliasing Outline mode Thresholds etc.. With an OLAP Services license, user can perform additional OLAP analysis, using the following features:  Displaying data on the fly: dynamic aggregation, page  Creating metrics on-the-fly: derived metrics, Defining attribute elements on-the-fly: derived elements,  Filtering data on the fly: view filters and metric filters,  Importing data as an Intelligent Cube

Image URL Attribute type HTML Tag in Microstartegy

Creating and attribute with a form with Image URL Image URL Attribute: <img src='images\Folder\UBD\nstudios\N/A.png' height='120' width='163'> <img src='images\Folder\UBD\nstudios\BCU.png' height='120' width='163'> <img src='images\Folder\UBD\nstudios\IUM.png' height='120' width='163'> <img src='images\Folder\UBD\nstudios\WAR.png' height='120' width='163'> <img src='images\Folder\UBD\nstudios\TVN.png' height='120' width='163'> <img src='images\Folder\UBD\nstudios\N/A.png' height='120' width='163'> <IMG src="../images/ 1.png"  height=80 width=400> Concat("../images/Dash/", Id, ".png") ApplySimple(" '<img src=../images/Dash/'+ltrim(str(#0))+'.png height=120 width=120>' ", Id) IF((StudioName = "OURS"), "Ours...

Microstrategy Caches explained

Microstrategy Caches Improving Response Time: Caching A  cache is a result set that is stored on a system to improve response time in future requests.  With caching, users can retrieve results from Intelligence Server rather than re-executing queries against a database. To delete all object caches for a project 1 In Developer, log into a project. You must log in with a user account that has administrative privileges. 2 From the  Administration  menu, point to  Projects , and then select  Project Configuration . The Project Configuration Editor opens. 3 Expand  Caching , expand  Auxiliary Caches , then select  Objects . To delete all configuration object caches for a server 1 Log in to the project source. 2 From the  Administration  menu in Developer, point to  Server , and then select  Purge Server Object Caches . 4 Click  Purge Now . To purge web cache follow the steps in the link ...

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 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...

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 ...

Execute Integrity manager test from Command line

Execute Integrity manager test from Command line  MSTR Integrity Manager allows the user to execute a test without having to load the GUI, or to schedule a test to run later at specific times or dates. Go over using Windows AT command at: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/313565/how-to-use-the-at-command-to-schedule-tasks https://www.lifewire.com/at-command-2618090 Here are the prerequisites to execute a test from the command line: Create a test and saved using the Integrity Manager graphical interface. Make sure that the users has the ' Use Integrity Manager ' privilege for that project(provided by the administrator) and the ' Execute ' permission for the reports to be tested. Keep in mind that MicroStrategy Integrity Manager can only test three-tier projects, i.e., projects which are connected to a MicroStrategy i- Server. Projects in Direct Connection (two-tier) mode cannot be tested with this tool...