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
Labels:

Comments

  1. Amber TaylorJune 7, 2021 at 2:14 AM

    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

No 'Alert' option appear when trying to create an alert-based subscription in MicroStrategy Distribution Services

The 'Alert' option does not appear when attempting to create an alert-based subscription in MicroStrategy Distribution Services In MicroStrategy Distribution Service 9.x and 10.x, and 11.x versions it is possible to create an alert-based subscription. When right-clicking the metric header of a report in MicroStrategy Web 9.0.x, the 'Alerts' option does not appear:    Cause : This issue occurs because the user attempting to create the alert does  not have all of the necessary privileges on alerts.   Fix : In order to create an alert-based subscription, the following privileges are required: In order ti get permissions to create alerts the user should be given the following privileges by the admin: New Version of Microstrategy 11.x: Server- Distribution: Older Versions of Microstrategy 9.x, 10.x etc..: Web Reporter > Web user Web Analyst > Web create alert   ...
Post a Comment
Read more

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 ...
Post a Comment
Read more

"System Prompt" and its uses in MicroStrategy

System Prompt and its uses in MicroStrategy WHAT IS A "SYSTEM PROMPT"? "System Prompt" is a system object that was introduced back in version 8.0.0. The object is named as "User Login" and is implemented as a prompt object. The object can be found under Public Objects > Prompts > System prompts, as shown below: Unlike ordinary prompt objects, system prompts don't require any answers from the user. When a report containing a system prompt runs, the prompt is answered automatically with the login of the user who runs the report. On the other hand, like other prompt objects, answers to system prompts are used to match caches. Therefore, users don't share caches for reports that contain system prompts. For details on how caches are matched, refer to the following MicroStrategy Knowledge Base document: KB5300-7X0-0147 - How are caches matched in MicroStrategy Intelligence Server 7.x? WHEN ARE SYSTEM PROMPTS USED?    System pr...
Post a Comment
Read more

Custom Subtotal Displays in MicroStrategy

Defining custom subtotal displays in MicroStrategy By default, when users apply subtotals in a report, the name of the subtotal is displayed in the subtotal line items that appear in the report. Users can use custom subtotals to give more control over the characteristics of a subtotal. Custom subtotals allow users to define custom subtotal line items that appear on the reports  U sers can make the subtotal name dynamic by typing special characters in the subtotal name field as listed in the following table. Character Description #A The name of the attribute under which the subtotal appears. #P The name of the attribute to the left of, or above the attribute under which the subtotal appears. #0 All the forms of the parent element. #1 The first form of the parent element reading from left to right or from top to bottom. #2 The second form of the parent element reading from left to right or from top to bottom. #3 The third form of th...
Post a 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

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 ...
1 comment
Read more

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 . ...
4 comments
Read more

Prompts in URL API

Prompts in URL API promptsAnswerXML An XML representation of a collection of prompt answers. Passing this parameter with any number of common events automatically applies the supplied prompt answers to as many of the prompts as are found in the particular report, document, or HTML document. originMessageID An existing report, document, or HTML document instance. This parameter is used by the resulting report, document, or HTML document to extract the prompt answers from the specified instance and use them as prompt answers to any corresponding prompts in the requested report, document, or HTML document. elementsPromptAnswers A convenience parameter that allows you to answer single or multiple element prompts by supplying individual prompt answers in the form of AttributeID;AttributeElementID^DisplayName . When there are multiple prompt answers, each individual answer is separated by a "," (comma) separator character. In addition, you can include multiple elem...
Post a Comment
Read more

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...
1 comment
Read more

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    
1 comment
Read more