MicroStrategy MultiSource Option Frequently Asked Questions
- What is MicroStrategy MultiSource Option?
- What does MicroStrategy MultiSource Option allows users to do?
- What are the benefits of using MicroStrategy MultiSource Option?
- What are the core technological advantages of MicroStrategy MultiSource Option?
- What type of data sources are supported by the MicroStrategy MultiSource Option?
- Is MicroStrategy MultiSource Option an add-on option?
- Will users and report developers notice any difference when accessing data from multiple sources?
- Does MicroStrategy MultiSource Option offer a quick and easy migration path from departmental and workgroup BI applications to Enterprise BI?
- Does data integration hinder MicroStrategy object reusability?
- Does MicroStrategy MultiSource Option support all analytical capabilities of the MicroStrategy BI Platform?
- Can users drill anywhere across multiple data sources?
- What is MicroStrategy MultiSource Option’s push-down architecture and how is it beneficial?
- Can some queries be offloaded to alternative databases for improved performance and enhanced capacity?
- Does MicroStrategy MultiSource Option support conformed dimensions?
- Is it possible to have the same lookup table sourced from multiple data sources? For example, the LU_STORE table can be found on a datamart as well as on the enterprise data warehouse.
1. What is MicroStrategy MultiSource Option?
MicroStrategy MultiSource Option is a new and fully integrated add-on component of MicroStrategy Intelligence Server. It allows users to seamlessly report, analyze, and monitor data across multiple sources through a single business model.
2. What does MicroStrategy MultiSource Option allows users to do?
Architects: BI architects can quickly build a single multidimensional model spanning multiple data sources including data warehouses, data marts, operational databases, and departmental databases.
Developers: Report designers and developers can create new reports and documents regardless of the underlying data stores.
End-Users: End-users can enjoy the benefit of accessing reports, dashboards, and even entire BI applications in minimal time, while leaving the data in its disparate sources.
3. What are the benefits of using MicroStrategy MultiSource Option?
MicroStrategy MultiSource Option allows users to:
- Support departmental BI by providing more access to data faster
- Lower the cost of BI by gradually evolving to an Enterprise BI architecture
- Seamlessly explore any data regardless of its location
- Interact with reports, dashboards and OLAP grids similar to single-source ROLAP engine
- Offload simple queries to less expensive databases
- Increase the richness, relevance and value of any report or dashboard by incorporating more data from many sources
4. What are the core technological advantages of MicroStrategy MultiSource Option?
MicroStrategy MultiSource Option:
- Provides a single multidimensional business model across multiple data sources
- Fully leverages MicroStrategy central metadata repository for fastest development and maximum reusability
- Extends seamless drill-through capabilities to the full depth and breadth of multiple databases
- Generates optimized SQL for each specific database
- Aggregate-aware engine dynamically selects optimal data sources to ensure superior query performance
- Multi-pass SQL engine resolves complex queries across many databases
- Push-down architecture automatically chooses the optimum database server for joining data from multiple sources resulting in minimum data movement across the network
5. What type of data sources are supported by the MicroStrategy MultiSource Option?
MicroStrategy MultiSource Option spans multiple data sources including data warehouses, data marts, operational databases, and departmental databases. Its multiple data access at the schema level supports multiple relational sources. Users can combine anything that can be accessed with an ODBC driver: RDBMS, Excel, text file, SalesForce.com, even some web services.
6. Is MicroStrategy MultiSource Option an add-on option?
Yes. MicroStrategy MultiSource Option is a new and fully integrated add-on component of MicroStrategy Intelligence Server.
7. Will users and report developers notice any difference when accessing data from multiple sources?
No. MicroStrategy MultiSource Option is completely transparent to users and developers and they can benefit from a unified view of the business, regardless of the underlying data stores.
8. Does MicroStrategy MultiSource Option offer a quick and easy migration path from departmental and workgroup BI applications to Enterprise BI?
Yes. MicroStrategy MultiSource Option offers an evolutionary path that allows companies to migrate departmental BI deployments gradually from disparate islands of BI into a fully integrated and unified enterprise BI architecture.
In the first stage, disparate islands of BI based on MicroStrategy technology can be gradually integrated into a multi-source environment, leaving data in its disparate departmental databases, but merging metadata and reports into a single unified BI layer.
In the second stage, the departmental data can be gradually moved from the departmental databases into the more unified data warehouse. As the departmental data is gradually moved into the data warehouse, the MicroStrategy multi-dimensional model can simply be “re-pointed” to the data’s new database source, and all reports and dashboards will continue to run without change.
9. Does data integration hinder MicroStrategy object reusability?
No. BI architects and developers can define a single multidimensional model spanning the different data sources. If at any point some or all data is migrated to an integrated data warehouse, this model can simply be “re-pointed” to the data’s new source and all objects can be reused, making reports and dashboards available without changing any component.
10. Does MicroStrategy MultiSource Option support all analytical capabilities of the MicroStrategy BI Platform?
Yes. In fact, MicroStrategy MultiSource Option extends the capabilities of MicroStrategy’s ROLAP architecture, providing a completely transparent experience to users and developers.
11. Can users drill anywhere across multiple data sources?
Yes. With MicroStrategy MultiSource Option, MicroStrategy users can seamlessly drill across the full depth and breadth of multiple data bases.
12. What is MicroStrategy MultiSource Option’s push-down architecture and how is it beneficial?
Many BI technologies require tremendous amounts of data movement since they join data in a middle-tier. In contrast, MicroStrategy SQL Engine generates highly optimized multi-pass SQL for each RDBMS and pushes processes and calculations down to the database level.
This push-down architecture is much more efficient than mid-tier joins since it requires much less server capacity, minimizes the movement of data across the network, and uses database engines that are far more optimized for high-volume join tasks.
13. Can some queries be offloaded to alternative databases for improved performance and enhanced capacity?
Yes. Companies can use MicroStrategy MultiSource Option to get more capacity from expensive database engines by offloading simple queries from high-end, high-cost database servers onto much less expensive, general purpose databases. MicroStrategy’s ROLAP engine will automatically use the most efficient source whenever possible, reserving the high-end database capacity for more complex and higher volume queries.
14. Does MicroStrategy MultiSource Option support conformed dimensions?
Yes. A conformed dimension is a set of data attributes that have been physically implemented in multiple database tables using the same structure, attributes, domain values, definitions and concepts in each implementation.
15. Is it possible to have the same lookup table sourced from multiple data sources? For example, the LU_STORE table can be found on a datamart as well as on the enterprise data warehouse.
Yes. Lookup tables may be sourced from multiple databases. In this case, there's a "primary" database instance, and one or more "secondary" database instances for that lookup table.