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 . ...

Error. Engine Attribute Role Limit Exceeded! To get rid off this error: (1) Turn off Engine Attribute Role setting in VLDB dialog

Error. Engine Attribute Role Limit Exceeded! Some times Microstrategy will give the below error when updating the schema after an attribute is created. MicroStrategy Developer --------------------------- Error(s) occurred while loading schema: [DFCSCHEMA] Population Exception: The object shown in the following hierarchy no longer exists in schema: -Table LKUP_TEST_FEE_SHIPMENTS error. Engine Attribute Role Limit Exceeded! To get rid off this error: (1) Turn off Engine Attribute Role setting in VLDB dialog; OR (2) Use Table Alias featureDSSSQLEngine: Schema loading error: Message from GetErrorInfo : Report cache is not found.. Error(s) occurred while loading schema: 63. CAUSE: This error message means that the table shown in the error text needs to be split into a very large number tables. MicroStrategy has a limitation that only allows one table to be split into no more than 100 tables. The error above is shown when this limitation is surpassed....

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:...

Disable data blending in MicroStrategy

Disable data blending in MicroStrategy Starting in MicroStrategy 9.4 data blending was made available for documents and dashboards. This permits grid, graph and widget objects to source data from multiple different datasets at the same time.  This is available under the analytical engine VLDB properties inside of project configuration. The property is named "document grids from multiple datasets" and defaults to enabled but can be set to disabled.  Below are the steps to enable/disable the settings of data blending: 1. Go to project configuration by right clicking on specific project(You need admin rights to do this). 2. In the Project configuration windows as shown below select Configure under Project level VLDB settings section. 3. Now it will open the VLDB settings window, select + on " Analytical Engine Settings " and then click on " Document Grids from multiple datasets " option. You will be presented with two...

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...

Types of result caches in Microstrategy

Types of result caches Microstrategy The following types of  result caches are created by Intelligence Server: • Matching caches • History caches • Matching-History caches • XML caches All document caches are Matching caches; documents do not generate History caches or XML caches. Intelligent Cube reports do not create Matching caches. Matching caches Matching caches  are the  results of reports and documents that are retained for later use by the same requests later on. In general, Matching caches are the type of result caches that are used most often by Intelligence Server. When result caching is enabled, Intelligence Server determines for each request whether it can be served by an already existing Matching cache. If there is no match, it then runs the report or document on the database and creates a new Matching cache that can be reused if the same request is submitted again. This caching process is managed by the system administrator and ...

Multi-Table Data Import(MTDI) from one or more supported data sources

Multi-Table Data Import(MTDI) from one or more supported data sources In MicroStrategy Analytics Enterprise Web 10 onewards, users can now simultaneously import two or more tables from one or more supported data sources, this feature is called Multi-Table Data Import (MTDI) which has been renamed as Super Cubes in MSTR 2019 (Does it sound like multisourcing for all the users without admin help?) Currently, all connectors in MicroStrategy Web 10 except " OLAP " and " Search Engine Indices " support Multi-Table Data Import. Users are able to add multiple tables/files when doing data import from single connector, as shown below: Users are also able to combine multiple tables/files from different sources and store them into one single Intelligent Cube, as shown below:

Personalizing file locations, email and file subscriptions using macros in Microstrategy

Personalizing file locations MSTr allows to dynamically specify the  File Location  and  Backup File Location  in a file device using macros.  For example, if you specify the  File Location  as  C:\Reports\{&RecipientName}\ ,  all subscriptions using that file device are delivered to subfolders of  C:\Reports\ . Subscribed reports or documents for each recipient are delivered to a subfolder with that recipient’s name, such as  C:\Reports\Jane Smith\  or  C:\Reports\Hiro Protagonist\ . The table below lists the macros that can be used in the  File Location  and  Backup File Location  fields in a file device: Description Macro Date on which the subscription is sent {&Date} Time at which the subscription is sent {&Time} Name of the recipient {&RecipientName} User ID (32-character GUID) of the recipient {&RecipientID} Distribution Services add...

Microstrategy Report Services documents and dashboards

Microstrategy Report Services documents vs Dashboards A MicroStrategy Report Services document displays data coming from multiple reports, with the data laid out and designed in presentation-quality format. Most data on a document is from one or more underlying datasets. A dataset is a standard MicroStrategy report. Other document components that do not originate from the dataset, such as static text used for a title or heading, page numbers, and images, are added by the document's designer and are stored in the document's definition. A Report Services (RS) dashboard is a special type of document. An RS dashboard is commonly only one page long, is intended to be viewed online, and usually provides interactive features that let analysts change how they view the dashboard’s data, as well as what data they are viewing. A broad selection of widgets and a wide variety of formatting options allow you to design a customized, interactive dashboard. Both documents and RS dashb...

"Table structure cannot read or update" in the warehouse catalog error while updating a table structure in Microstrategy

"Table structure cannot read or update"  in the warehouse catalog error while updating a table structure while using Warehouse Catalog in MicroStrategy Developer  This issue could be due to the incorrect prefix.  To fix the issue. 1. Open the Warehouse Catalog. 2. Select the table and assign the correct Prefix update the structure. 3. Save and close the warehouse catalog.