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Mastering Business Intelligence with MicroStrategy
Mastering Business Intelligence with MicroStrategy

Mastering Business Intelligence with MicroStrategy: Master Business Intelligence with Microstrategy 10

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Profile Icon Dmitry Anoshin Profile Icon Neil Mehta Profile Icon Ma Profile Icon Rana
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Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Half star icon Empty star icon 3.7 (7 Ratings)
Paperback Jul 2016 396 pages 1st Edition
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Profile Icon Dmitry Anoshin Profile Icon Neil Mehta Profile Icon Ma Profile Icon Rana
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Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Half star icon Empty star icon 3.7 (7 Ratings)
Paperback Jul 2016 396 pages 1st Edition
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Mastering Business Intelligence with MicroStrategy

Chapter 2. Setting Up an Analytics Semantic Layer and Public Objects

Semantics in general means the meaning of a message behind the words, so when we say semantic in terms of BI, it means the meaning of data from the user's perspective. It is the keystone of any data warehouse project, as it allows better understanding of requirements, the design of successive data models, and a link between the physical data model and the reporting tool, in our case MicroStrategy. In the previous chapter, we learned about setting up an environment for MicroStrategy, so in this chapter we can dig deeper and understand about the semantic layer and the objects needed to present data to an end user.

This chapter will cover:

  • BI architecture
  • The project design process
  • Defining schema objects
    • Creating attributes
    • Defining parent-child relationships
    • Building hierarchies
    • Creating facts

  • Defining public objects
    • Creating simple and complex metrics
    • Adding filters
    • Creating prompts

BI architecture

BI is all about delivering timely and relevant information to the right level of audience, which helps them to make an appropriate decision. In this section, we will learn about BI architecture and the components involved in it.

Components of BI architecture

Components of BI architecture

Source system: This is any stored data that will be used for BI projects. It could be a database, mainframe system or flat files, or any other system that stores Online Transaction Processing (OLTP) data. This is where data is stored in its raw form.

ETL: This process then pulls the data from the source system and prepares it for the data warehouse. It involves three steps:

  • Extract: The process of reading data from source systems
  • Transform: The process of converting data from its previous form to the form it needs to be in, either by combining data from multiple sources or by applying business rules and logic
  • Load: The process of writing data into the target database, that is, the data warehouse

Data warehouse: This is...

The project design process

Project design is not just about creating a project in MicroStrategy architect; it involves several steps and thorough analysis, such as how data is stored in the data warehouse, what reports the user wants based on the data, and so on. The following are the steps involved in our project design process:

The project design process

Logical data model design

Once the user have business requirements documented, the user must create a fact qualifier matrix to identify the attributes, facts, and hierarchies, which are the building blocks of any logical data model.

An example of a fact qualifier is as follows:

Logical data model design

A logical data model is created based on the source systems, and designed before defining a data warehouse. So, it's good for seeing which objects the users want and checking whether the objects are in the source systems. It represents the definition, characteristics, and relationships of the data. This graphical representation of information is easily understandable by business users...

Schema objects

Schema objects represent different components of the logical data model and are directly mapped to a column or columns in the database. Attributes, facts, functions, and operations, hierarchies, partition mappings, tables, and transformations are all schema objects; however, three schema objects comprise the core of project definition and will be covered in this section:

Schema objects

Attributes

Attributes are the descriptive part of the database. They provide information about the data; for example, customer name and city are attributes. The SELECT clause of a SQL statement is based on these attributes.

The following is the report with the Policy Number and Broker Name as an attribute:

Attributes

When we see the SQL for this report, the Policy Number and Broker Name will be shown in the SELECT clause as follows:

Attributes

Attribute types

We have three different types of attribute:

  • Compound attribute
  • Homogenous attribute
  • Heterogeneous attribute

Compound attribute: Uses two or more columns as its ID. It is like...

Public objects

Public objects are also known as application objects, and are based on the schema objects. The following diagram shows all the public objects available in MicroStrategy:

Public objects

In the following section, we will discuss these public objects in detail.

Metrics

Metrics are public objects that are built from attributes, facts, or other metrics that allow data aggregation. A metric definition contains a formula that determines the calculation to be performed on the data. At a high level, metrics can be categorized as:

  • Simple metrics
  • Advanced metrics

Types of metric

  • Simple metrics include:
    • Basic metrics: Simple aggregations of fact, for example SUM (amount), AVG (sale), and so on
    • Compound metrics: Combinations of two or more metric objects with one or more constant, mathematical operator, or non-aggregate function, for example, revenue = quantity * price, Runningavg (sales), where sales is a metric

  • Advanced metrics include:
    • Level metrics: Define the level at which the metric aggregates. By default...

Summary

In this chapter, we learned about BI architecture, which is a framework for organizing data and technology components that builds BI systems for data analytics. The project design process is not just the creation of a project; it involves lots of analysis, planning, deployment, development, and maintenance. Schema objects are the building blocks of any MicroStrategy project, and include attributes, facts, and so on. Public objects are based on schema objects and provide the user with the flexibility to generate analytical data; examples of these include metrics, reports, documents, and so on.

In the next chapter, we will be going into more detail about other public objects, such as reports, drill maps, custom groups, consolidations, and so on.

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Key benefits

  • Fix the gap between BI tools and implementation/integration processes with big data and predictive analytics using this comprehensive guide to MicroStrategy 10
  • Highly practical, example-rich guide that lets you implement business intelligence with MicroStrategy 10 in your organization
  • Create the best user experience with BI dashboards using MicroStrategy using this up-to-date, comprehensive guide

Description

Business intelligence is becoming more important by the day, with cloud offerings and mobile devices gaining wider acceptance and achieving better market penetration. MicroStrategy Reporting Suite is an absolute leader in the BI market and offers rich capabilities from basic data visualizations to predictive analytics. It lets you various delivery methods such as the Web, desktops, and mobiles. Using real-world BI scenarios, this book helps you to implement Business Analytics solutions in big e-commerce companies. It kicks off with MicroStrategy 10 features and then covers schema design models and techniques. Building upon your existing knowledge, the book will teach you advanced techniques for building documents and dashboards. It further teaches various graphical techniques for presenting data for analysis using maps, graphs, and advanced charts. Although MicroStrategy has rich functionality, the book will show how to customize it in order to meet your business requirements. You will also become familiar with the native analytical functions that will help you to maximize the impact of BI solutions with powerful predictive analytics. Furthermore, the book will focus on MicroStrategy Mobile Analytics along with data discovery and desktop capabilities such as connecting various data sources and building interactive dashboards. The book will also uncover best practices, troubleshooting techniques for MicroStrategy system administration, and also security and authentication techniques. Lastly, you will learn to use Hadoop for MicroStrategy reporting. By the end of the book, you will become proficient in evaluating any BI software in order to choose the best one that meets all business requirements.

Who is this book for?

This book is intended for BI, DWH, ETL developers, BI/DWH/Analytics managers, analysts, and business users who already have MicroStrategy in their organization and want to take it to the next level in order to increase performance and improve user experience. In addition, it helps the reader to migrate from MicroStrategy 9 to MicroStrategy 10 and to start using the new capabilities.

What you will learn

  • Explore various visualization techniques for presenting analyzed data
  • Customize MicroStrategy in order to meet your business requirements
  • Develop and design mobile dashboards
  • Use the advanced techniques such as designing reports, documents and interactive dashboards for building dashboards
  • Understand the concepts of data discovery and Desktop capabilities
  • Explore the best practices for Microstrategy system administration
  • Find and fix issues based on connections, environment or documents
  • Integrate third party ESRI map tools with MicroStrategy to create geo based reports

Product Details

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Publication date, Length, Edition, Language, ISBN-13
Publication date : Jul 29, 2016
Length: 396 pages
Edition : 1st
Language : English
ISBN-13 : 9781785884405
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Publication date : Jul 29, 2016
Length: 396 pages
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Language : English
ISBN-13 : 9781785884405
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Table of Contents

12 Chapters
1. Getting Started with MicroStrategy Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
2. Setting Up an Analytics Semantic Layer and Public Objects Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
3. Building Advanced Reports and Documents Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
4. Advanced Visualization Techniques Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
5. Customization of MicroStrategy Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
6. Predictive Analysis with MicroStrategy Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
7. Accelerating Your Business with Mobile Analytics Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
8. Data Discovery with MicroStrategy Desktop Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
9. MicroStrategy System Administration Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
10. Design and Implementation of the Security Model Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
11. Big Data Analytics with MicroStrategy Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
12. MicroStrategy Troubleshooting Chevron down icon Chevron up icon

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Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Half star icon Empty star icon 3.7
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Amazon Customer Apr 18, 2019
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Awesome book, very well written.
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Felipe Pereira Aug 02, 2016
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This is a great book for anyone who wants to learn more about MicroStrategy it's ecosystem. It explains the development, administration and even the integration with Big Data. I hardly recommend it if you need to learn more about BI and MicroStrategy.
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Sergey Dec 29, 2016
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The best book I ever read!
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Amazon Customer Oct 04, 2016
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This book provides a comprehensive summary of the entire feature set provided by Microstrategy 10.It is a good technical/pragmatic introduction for a Microstrategy novice developer as well as a useful resource for Microstrategy professionals who are specialized on a subset of the product's capabilities.
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Amazon Customer Jan 11, 2017
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Empty star icon Empty star icon 3
In order to follow examples laid out in this book, we have been trying to set up the backend Oracle database per instructions provided in this book on pages 29-30. However, the scripts do not fully work. First, they rely on a package called UTILS that is not included with the book. We were able to generate it in SQL Developer after some research. Second, the scripts make use of a user defined function called udfBuildISO8601Date, which again was not provided. Finally, character set conversion errors occur when attempting to create two of the views from the scripts. Perhaps, some nonstandard database settings are needed to make the scripts run without errors. I would appreciate if the publisher could provide updated SQL scripts for download on the PACKT web site.
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