Skip to main content

Using Scan MD Microstrategy

ScanMD 

WHAT IS SCAN MD?
ScanMD is a troubleshooting application whose aim is to provide a quick resolution to known metadata logical inconsistencies.  Logical inconsistencies are errors within an object's definition structure. The word 'known" means that those erroneous structures have already been investigated and processed by MicroStrategy Technical Support and, as a result, a Test has been implemented in ScanMD. 
It is not the intention that ScanMD be used as a proactive method for addressing metadata inconsistencies.  If you find yourself proactively running ScanMD and/or finding inconsistencies through ScanMD then please contact MicroStrategy Technical Support as this means that there is, most likely, a deeper problem to be investigated.
Refer to the following technical note if ScanMD is going to be executed against a 10.3 and higher metadata:
CONSIDERATIONS/GUIDELINES
  • ScanMD is to be used as a troubleshooting application and a vehicle to provide a quick resolutionafter a problem has been identified as a metadata inconsistency. In other words, ScanMD should not be run on a "schedule" or "after every migration". 
  • Before running ScanMD, a database backup of the metadata must be made. With a backup of the metadata in place, proposed fixes should only be accepted if the full impact of the fix is understood.
  • When a Fix is performed on a project, the MicroStrategy Intelligence Server should be stopped, or that Project unloaded.  No users should be connected to the project undergoing a fix.
  • Always use the latest version of ScanMD, which is the one supplied in this document.
  • For cases where ScanMD is used, there may still be questions as to how the metadata got into this state.  To help answer that question --  customers encountering inconsistency issues should make note of Schema-related changes (if the problem is affecting Schema objects), Object Migrations, or error messages prior to experiencing the problem.  Change Journaling, if it has been enabled, can help in preserving this information.
Microstrategy's disclaimers and Limitation of Liabilities about using ScanMD:

Disclaimer:The utility application is provided "as is" and without warranty of any kind. Microstrategy Expressly disclaims all warranties, express, implied or statutory, including, without limitation, the implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, satisfactory quality and noninfringement.
Limitation of Liability: Microstrategy shall have no liability to licensee for any damages of any kind, including, but not limited to, liability for direct, indirect, special, incidental or consequential, damages (which shall include, but not be limited to, loss of data or information, loss of revenue or anticipated profits or lost business).
SCANMD CHECK-ONLY MODE
The current version of ScanMD does not provide the ability to execute one or more common tests in check-only mode. Due to the new feature enforcing the inter-object dependencies, check-only mode is not possible in this release. Consider one example, before executing  Schema Collection Verification test which ensures all schema objects are in the Schema collection, the ScanMD will execute Table Verification test and eliminate table objects with invalid definition. Therefore, the execution sequence is crucial to maintain the metadata consistency. Check-only mode may generate misleading results by ignoring inter-object dependencies and execution sequence.
HOW TO USE SCANMD
Follow steps below:
  1. Go to Start -> Programs -> MicroStrategy -> Tools, run ScanMD
  2. Click Nextto pass ScanMD introduction to the next step, which is Step 1of ScanMD
  3. In Step 1, choose a Project Source from the drop down list, and enter a Login and a Passwordthat have administrative privileges to the metadata. Click Next to go to Step 2
  4. In Step 2, choose a single project, All Projects , or Configuration from the drop down list. Select a different location for log file if desired. Click Next to go to Step 3

      
    NOTE: During the transition from Step2 to Step3, ScanMD will check the compatibility between the Metadata Version and the version of the MicroStrategy platform present on the machine where ScanMD is running.


  5. In Step 3, choose between Common Tests and Custom Tests. If a Custom Test is not yet added, click Add test to browse to its location. Make your test selections, and Click Next to go to Step 4;



    NOTE:
    - Multiple Common Tests can be chosen at once, but only one Custom Test can run one at a time.
    - Either Common Tests or Custom Tests can be selected, but not both.

  6. In Step 4, adjust tests against project(s) chosen in Step 2, select a Number of concurrent test executions, choose whether to Fix all errors automatically or not, and click Next to begin the scan; If any errors are found, ScanMD will pop up a dialog for each set of Common Tests that was executed.


    NOTE:
    - Some ScanMD Common Tests must be run in a specific order. As of ScanMD 8, the execution order of the Tests is enforced. If Common Tests is chosen in Step 3, ScanMD will automatically add any other Common Tests that are required. 

    Based on your test selections, Scan MD has identified some additional tests which need to be run in order to ensure the integrity of your Metadata.
The required tests will be added to your selections.

    Though only "Attribute Verification" and "Hierarchies Verification" are selected, four other common tests are added with suffix "(Required)":

    - Those Tests which do not have any dependencies are still allowed to execute in parallel.
    - "Concurrent test executions" usually reduce the overall execution time when running on a computer with multiple cores or CPUs and against remote MDs (i.e. not a local DB such as Access).

  7.  In the Summary Step, select "Check here to open the log file" if you wish to review, after clicking Close, the actions that ScanMD performed. Otherwise, simply click Close. 

    ScanMD Test Results:

    ScanMD Summary step:

  8. Restart Intelligence Server if the changes cannot be reflected in 3-tier environemnt.  

Labels

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Update the data on an Intelligent Cube without having to republish the entire cube in MicroStrategy

Update the data on an Intelligent Cube without having to republish the entire cube in MicroStrategy MicroStrategy has introduced a feature known as, Incremental Refresh Options, which allow Intelligent Cubes to be updated based on one or more attributes, by setting up incremental refresh settings to update the Intelligent Cube with only new data. This can reduce the time and system resources necessary to update the Intelligent Cube periodically versus a full republish. For example, if a user has an Intelligent Cube that contains weekly sales data, the user may want this Intelligent Cube to be updated at the end of every week with the sales data for that week. By setting up incremental refresh settings, he can make it so that only data for one week is added to the Intelligent Cube, without affecting the existing data and without having to reload all existing data. Users can select t...
7 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

Retrieve a list of user groups and the associated users in MicroStrategy Developer 9.x / 10.x

Retrieve a list of user groups and the associated users in MicroStrategy Developer Follow the steps below to create a list of all groups and the users in each group: In MicroStrategy Developer 9.x, select 'Project Documentation' from the Tools menu to start the wizard. Select any project that is in the project source that contains the users and groups and click Next. Select only Configuration Objects for documentation. Uncheck the 'Basic Properties' object category from the next screen, as shown below: Then select only 'User Group' under the Configuration Objects section and only 'Groups' and 'Members' under the Definition section, as shown below: Go through the rest of the wizard, and open the resulting documentation. After navigating down to the User Groups, the documentation should look similar to the following image: This page shows every group, any child groups, and all members of each group.
Post a Comment
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 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 Inte...
1 comment
Read more

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 ...
7 comments
Read more

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...
3 comments
Read more

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 ...
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 default sort order for an attribute elements browsing

MicroStrategy default sort order for an attribute elements browsing and display How does MicroStrategy 9.x resolve the default sort order for an attribute when different sort orders are defined for different forms? Consider the following cases: CASE 1 A new attribute is created with three forms, all with sort order set to none. Form Name Form Type Default Sort Order ID ID None DESC DESC None LongDesc None None The overall sort order is evaluated and stored in the attribute definition when the attribute is saved. With all form sort orders set to none there is no saved sort order, MicroStrategy defaults to sort ascending by ID. CASE 2 The same attribute is modified so the forms are now: Form Name Form Type Default Sort Order ID ID None DESC DESC Descending LongDesc None Ascending Now when the attribute is saved, MicroStrategy goes through each form in the order they appear in the main 'Forms' window of the attribute editor. The first...
2 comments
Read more