MicroStrategy bridge reference

Prerequisites, troubleshooting, and parameter information for the MicroStrategy import bridge.

About this bridge

The MicroStrategy bridge imports business intelligence (BI) models, BI reports, and related implemented data resources such as database tables from MicroStrategy Intelligence Server, versions 7 to 10.

The bridge imports the contents of a single project. The bridge does not import information about database connections or users. The bridge imports MicroStrategy logical tables as BI collections. Derived elements are not supported.

The bridge does not capture the following relationships:

Between HTML documents and the reports they embed
Between reports and the intelligent cube they use

Prerequisites
Configure user security for successful imports
Import parameters

Prerequisites

Ensure that you meet the following prerequisites before you run the bridge:

To use the latest version of the bridge, you must install the prerequisite software.
You must install a supported version of MicroStrategy on the same computer that the bridge is installed on. This version of MicroStrategy must be able to open the metadata to be imported.
MicroStrategy database corruption can prevent the bridge from working correctly. Such corruption is reported in the MicroStrategy log file: C:\Program Files\Common Files\MicroStrategy\Log\DSSErrors.log. MicroStrategy support is aware of this issue and provides a ScanMD program that you can use to clean up these errors. Always run the ScanMD program before using this bridge.
MicroStrategy automatically creates reports whenever you create a project. The bridge does not differentiate between these reports and the reports that users create. To import only the reports that users create, delete the automatically generated reports from the MicroStrategy project before you run the bridge.

Configure user security for successful imports

To configure user security, take the following action in MicroStrategy Developer:

Connect to the Project Source as Administrator or as another login that can manage security.
Define a user.
Define a security role.
Associate the user to the security role as a member.
Grant access to the project for the user and the security role.
Check the following privileges on Version 7 for the user or on versions 9 or 10 for the security role:
- Use server cache
- Use Developer
- View SQL
- Administer Caches
- Load and Unload project
If you also grant the privilege Bypass all object security access checks, you avoid setting permissions on every object in the MicroStrategy project that you want to import.

Troubleshooting

To provide information to help the support team reproduce an issue, create a backup of the relational database that MicroStrategy uses to store project metadata:

Run the MicroStrategy ScanMD program.
Use the relational database management system utilities to create a database backup.
Give the support team the database backup file and the MicroStrategy user name and password for logging in.

Import parameters

The MicroStrategy bridge uses the following import configuration parameters.

Version

Required. Select the version of MicroStrategy that you want to connect to. The default selection, Auto-detect, attempts to detect the version that is installed.

Options

Auto-detect
9 to 10
8.0.0 to 8.1.2
7.5.2
7.5.0
7.0

Project source

Required. Browse to select the name of the MicroStrategy project source to connect to, or type the name.

A project source is a connection to a repository that is located on a local or remote Intelligence Server. The server holds connectivity to a data warehouse and contains a number of metadata projects that operate on this data warehouse. The list of project sources that are accessible from this computer is stored in the Windows registry.

To connect to a remote Intelligence Server that is not registered on the local computer, create a project source in MicroStrategy that points to the Intelligence Server.

Projects

Required. Browse to select the names of one or more projects that you want to connect to in the selected project source, or type the names.

Login user

Required. Type the user name to connect to the project source. This import bridge is read-only and never affects the contents of the MicroStrategy repository. It is therefore safe to attempt the initial metadata import as Administrator to ensure that the entire repository content is imported without access permission issues. Eventually, the administrator can set up a read-only user. For more details, see the MicroStrategy documentation on permissions and security.

Login password

Type the password to connect to the project source.

Default Language

If you use MicroStrategy version 9, specify the language that you would like to use. Only MicroStrategy version 9 supports multiple languages. English is the default.

Import schema only

Leave this option unselected to import both database and BI report metadata. Both types of metadata are necessary for data lineage.

Table design level

Specify whether you want the bridge to create logical entities from the physical tables.

If you select Logical and physical, logical entities and a logical data model are created and imported with the physical tables that implement them. If you accept the default Physical, no logical entities are created.

Incremental import

Keep this parameter selected. When you reimport from the same source, the bridge uses cached information to determine which objects did not change since the previous import. Only changed objects are reimported. Using the cached information can increase performance for large imports.

For new imports, or when the cache is deleted or corrupted, the bridge imports all objects from the source regardless of the selection that is specified.

Import joins

You can import joins that are defined in the BI model. By default, joins are not imported.

Import levels

You can import levels and hierarchies. When the option is selected, levels and hierarchies that are defined in the BI model are imported. By default, they are not imported.

Metadata consistency check

Perform a consistency check on the selected metadata before it is imported into the metadata repository. It is possible to save metadata in source tools in ways that cause problems when the assets are imported into the metadata repository or used in other tools. For example, a foreign key might have no connection to a primary key or to an alternate key. In some cases, the metadata might be so semantically inconsistent that the bridge cannot import it.

The metadata consistency check returns warnings and errors in the log file.

Basic check: The default. Performs the minimum consistency checks necessary to validate the metadata, including checking for missing relationships and foreign keys that are not connected to primary or alternate keys.; In some cases, the basic check might be more rigorous than necessary and you can ignore certain errors or warnings.
Detailed check: Performs the basic check plus more advanced semantic checks specific to the type of metadata that is imported. This level can be used when the source tool does not have the ability to validate the metadata.
No check: Use with extreme caution. Selecting this option could result in the import of duplicates or invalid identities and might cause serious problems with your use of suite tools and the metadata repository.

If an asset description already exists

Specify what action to take if an imported asset matches an existing asset in the metadata repository. You can keep the existing description, or overwrite the existing description with the description of the imported asset.

If either description is null, the non-null description is used, regardless of which option you specify. The default behavior is to replace the existing description.