What is MicroStrategy - Beginners Tutorial

MicroStrategy is one of the leading business intelligence software that allows users to get some deep insights into the data trend by offering a plethora of analytical capabilities. Some of the main features offered by MicroStrategy are Advanced Analytics, Data Discovery, Data Visualisation, Embedded BI, and detailed reports and statements. This software is integrated across a complete database system, data warehouse, all the web services, relational systems, and all other data sources that contribute data for analysis. Learning MicroStrategy can open up a number of opportunities in the technology sector. 

In this MicroStrategy tutorial, you will learn below topics

What is MicroStrategy? What are the main features of MicroStrategy? MicroStrategy terminologies What is the architecture of MicroStrategy? How to install Microsoft Strategy? What are the key differences between Tableau and MicroStrategy?

What is MicroStrategy

MicroStrategy is an enterprise data warehouse analytics and reporting tool that is highly capable of generating reports that are insightful and all-inclusive. It is essentially a business intelligence software supporting interactive dashboards, high-end formatting in reports, scorecards, and several other features relating to the generation, sorting, and distribution of reports that provide insights into past, present, and future business trends.

MicroStrategy runs on ROLAP (Relational- Online Analytical Processing) that allows users to drill down to the required data anywhere in the entire database that is a relational Db. The search can be run down to even a transactional level while looking out for specific detail.

This tool can be used to access, analyze, and optimize data across flat files as well as multidimensional databases due to its high-end integration across the complete data ecosystem.

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What are the Main Features of MicroStrategy

MicroStrategy beholds several useful features that make it stand out from others in the same league. These are:

 a. Data discovery

Data discovery refers to the ability of this software to connect to and interact with any type of data source and gather and jumble data from several sources to generate useful reports. This software can gather data from several sources like flat files, relational sources, big data sources, cloud systems, etc.

 b. Data Wrangling

Data Wrangling refers to the feature that allows transforming data into useful information and modifying it as per the user’s needs. Different data wrangling and parsing techniques are deployed under this feature to create reports that are insightful and useful. This feature is helpful for both data scientists and business users.

 c. Data mining and predictive analysis

MicroStrategy is an excellent tool for incorporating third-party data mining and data modeling tools. These tools can be used by a wide set of users to build and design reports that are predictive and easily accessible.

 d. Analytical functions

MicroStrategy has a huge library of nearly 300 functions like OLAP, data mining functions, mathematical, financial, etc which are extremely useful in building up strongly interactive and informative reports and conducting statistical analyses.

 e. Real-time dashboards and mobile platform

MicroStrategy allows you to build up platforms that provide real-time data monitoring and can be accessed and controlled over any mobile device upon creation.

 f. Embedded BI

The biggest advantage of using MicroStrategy is the seamless interaction with other applications like IBM WebSphere or SharePoint or WebLogic etc that allow pre-coded development-ready portals for users to access.  

Related Article: Microstrategy Developer Interview Questions

MicroStrategy Terminologies

MicroStrategy has a large set of terminologies across which it works. Some of the important terms are:

a. Facts: These are the objects on which metrics are based. These are stored in a data warehouse.

b. Attributes: Attributes are information holders that add context to the facts.

c. Attribute elements: The data displayed on the report are called attribute Elements.

d. Metrics: The analytical calculations performed against stored data in order to generate processed reports for decision-making purposes.

e. Prompts: Prompts are the commands that help you dynamically modify the contents of a report.

f. Reports: A report is a modified data set that has been strategically tuned as per user and business requests.

What is the Architecture of MicroStrategy

The MicroStrategy architecture is a meta-driven type where metadata is the central repository of all the objects and can be used by all of the MicroStrategy products. These objects are reusable for all products.

Following is the architecture of MicroStrategy:

1. Object Layer

Object layers contain and store the objects created in MicroStrategy Metadata. These are:

a. Administration Objects: The key features of this layer are security, performance parameters, and user grouping.

b. Report Objects: The key features of this layer are assembling building blocks and providing textual and visual analysis.

c. Analysis Objects: The key feature of this layer are the provision of building blocks that are sourced from the Schema Layer.

d. Schema Objects: The key features of this layer are to provide a customized logical abstraction of the database schema for different business models.

2. ROLAP Architecture

In order to be able to access data from different data sources like flat files, data warehouses, cloud, etc, MicroStrategy uses ROLAP architecture. The three major components of this are:

a. Dynamic MDX Engine for generating multidimensional Expressions that interact with SAP, Microsoft Analysis Services and Hyperion Essbase, etc to access cube databases.

b. Dynamic SQL Engine for generating optimized SQL

c.  Freeform SQL Engine for providing direct access to several data sources like spreadsheets, databases, text files using a freehand SQL builder or graphical query builder.

3.  Unified Metadata

This phase unifies all the data sources into one and processes them as a single data source.

How to Install Microsoft Strategy

Installing MicroStrategy is an easy process.

First, you need to download the MicroStrategy free personal edition from the MicroStrategy Desktop and key in your details to register.

Upon registration, the setup wizard will display a screen that allows you to install and set up the software by clicking “NEXT” on the pop-up screen.

Once the installation is successful, you will be able to use MicroStrategy on your system.

Verifying the setup

To verify the success of your setup, open the start menu, and click on the MicroStrategy icon.

Related Article: Microstrategy vs Tableau

What are the key differences between Tableau and MicroStrategy

Tableau and MicroStrategy offer data visualization and report generation for predictive analyses and decision-making. However, there are some fundamental differences between the two. These are:

Component	Tableau	MicroStrategy
Tool Description	It is a data visualization tool	It is much more than just data visualization and offers a complete package for enterprise analytics and related capabilities.
usage	Visual analysis of data, building up dashboards, monitoring data, seamless data sharing	Seamless data gathering and access across all platforms, data wrangling, data parsing, creating visualizations, accelerated data exploration
features	Mapping across longitude and latitude, in-built geocoding	In-built mapping and geocoding
prerequisites	Working knowledge of SQL, DW concepts and data visualization	Working knowledge of SQL, DW concepts, and data visualization
User group	Administrators, developers, and business analysts	Administrators, developers, and business analysts

Conclusion

The easy-to-search and drill-anywhere feature for data across the entire relational database is a key highlight of MicroStrategy. This tool empowers you to create reports and dashboards that are interactive to the core and are a great input in decision-making.