Microstrategy Blog

Why are nulls on the top of the sort list when you’re looking at a grid report? That doesn’t make sense in the business that I’m in…a null is pretty much a zero as far as we’re concerned. We look at internet streaming data, so if an event isn’t happening, in our database it’s not like we have a tag that says the event didn’t happen, we just have a null when it comes to counting that event. So – push it to the bottom.

Null sorting is a function of the MicroStrategy Analytical engine…which can be found in your VLDB settings.

Right click on the Project that you’re going to be altering and select project configuration. The following menu will come up.

Select the Advanced option under the Project Definition Tree. Then click “configure” under the Analytical engine VLDB properties to get the following:

It’s the second option under the Analytical Engine tree…just switch the default from Null on Top to Null on Bottom. Now you don’t have to worry about changing each report individually, and I don’t have to feel bad about not making a post for the last month.

Check this out: http://www.cihi.ca/CIHI-ext-portal/internet/en/documentfull/health+system+performance/indicators/performance/indicator_ent

This public tool, built by the Canadian Institute for Health Information using MicroStrategy and Visual Crossing, shows hospital-level indicators across Canada over multiple years.

Can you spot the three different ways in which Microcharts have been used?

Oh, and just in case you need it, the tool comes with a user manual.

Sorin

It’s not really rocket science, but here’s a quick video on how Intelligent Cubes can be created and used in MicroStrategy.

It’s a way to take some load off of your data warehouse if you know specifically what it is that people need.

The administrator side of MicroStrategy is admittedly not my strongest point. I have to rely on the knowledge base…A LOT.

I’m not a Linux guy. Where I’m currently employed (GAIKAI) is very much a Linux shop. In my past positions I’ve always had a Windows Server, and with MicroStrategy it just kinda works (exceptions of course), but this Linux environment is a whole new thing for me.

With MicroStrategyWS first make sure that you’ve actually deployed the MicroStrategyWS.war file on the server. This was a duh moment. There are two files to deploy.

/opt/[MicroStrategy version]/WebServicesJ2EE/MicroStrategyWS.war
/opt/[MicroStrategy version]/WebUniversal/MicroStrategy.war

Copy them into the appropriate tomcat directory. In my case:

# /var/lib/tomcat-6/webapps

You can restart the tomcat server at this point.

# /etc/init.d/tomcat restart

Once Tomcat has taken care of exploding the file, then we can look at installing MicroStrategy Office…the purpose of all this.

To check the installation, go to:

http://localhost:8080/MicroStrategyWS/

…and you’ll get this.

Note the highlighted part. That’s actually going to be what you enter into your MicroStrategy Office settings.

I hope this can help people streamline some of the issues you might face with an Office installation only because most of the documentation out there is for Windows installations.

…and Dashboards. They’re basically the same thing right.

Here’s a video tutorial on how to create a dynamic image to add a little bit of flair into your Documents. Works greats if you’re distributing product reports, or category reports.

There’s a couple of prerequisites that I list in the video.

• Images should all be the same size, otherwise you get weird stretching that looks like garbage.
• Make sure that the directory and image are accessible by the iServer, PDF maker, and the Desktop…sometimes this is a pain.

Have fun!