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:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

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

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

Configure a report for use with Bulk Export in MicroStrategy

Configure a report for use with Bulk Export in MicroStrategy The Bulk Export feature enables a large report to be saved as a delimited text file. Using this feature, it is possible to retrieve result sets from a large dataset without having to load the entire dataset into memory. PS:  Once a report is setup for bulk export it cannot be used as a regular report. So if the report needs to be run as a normal report and as a bulk export report, the first step is to make a copy of the report for use with bulk export. Configure Bulk Export Bulk Export options are only available in MicroStrategy Developer. Open a 3-tier connection using MicroStrategy Developer and edit the desired report. Go to 'Data' on the top menu bar. Select 'Configure Bulk Export': Specify any additional desired configuration options. General Settings Bulk export database instance : This is the database instance to use to store the bulk export results. Temporary tables w...
Post a Comment
Read more

Data Mart Reports in Microstrategy

Creating Data Mart Reports in Microstrategy   When there is requirement to store all the report results to a database table you can use the interesting feature in Microstratgey called Data Mart Reports. To create a data mart table, you first create a data mart report that defines the columns of the data mart table. You then create the data mart table and populate it with data. The steps below walk you through the process of creating a data mart report and then executing the report to create a data mart table. The steps also include an example for most steps, based on Tutorial sample data in the MicroStrategy Tutorial project.                Follow the simple steps below to create a datamart report: 1 In MicroStrategy Developer, create a new report or select an existing report to use as the data mart table. The report should contain the attributes...
1 comment
Read more

Microstrategy Document Editor Sections Important Notes:

Microstrategy Document Editor Sections Important Notes: The Layout area is in the center of the Document Editor interface and provides the framework for precisely controlling where controls (such as text fields, grid and graph reports, images, and widgets) are displayed when the document is viewed in different display modes, printed, exported, emailed, and so on. To add data to the document, drag objects from the  Dataset Objects  panel and drop them into the  Layout  area. Controls are rendered differently depending on what section they are placed in, as described below:   Page Header : The control is displayed at the top of each page in the document. By default, if a document contains multiple layouts, the same Page Header is displayed for all layouts in the document. You can change this setting so that each layout has a separate Page Header. Document Header : The control is displayed once at the beginning of the document, immediately below the Page Header sec...
Post a Comment
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

Developer not starting with "invalid picture" message

Developer not starting with "invalid picture" message. This error could be due to the fact that t here is insufficient disk space on the drive used for the Windows Temp directory or the Optional Work Drive. https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/964421/error-481-invalid-picture Users may see the "Invalid Picture" error thrown when attempting to launch MicroStrategy Developer in Windows: CAUSE: This error is caused by a lack of available space on the user's hard disk to properly launch the platform. ACTION: To remedy the issue, simply clear up some active space on the hard drive to allow MicroStrategy to properly launch.
2 comments
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

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