1.

What is metadata? 2. What is two-tier connection? 3. What is three-tier connection? 4. What is difference between 2 and 3 tier connection? 5. What is ScanMD? 6. What is MD Doctor? 7. What is clustering? 8. How do you achieve schema object version control (similar to VSS)? 9. What are different kinds of objects in MicroStrategy? 10. How will you reset password of all users? 11. What are different modes you can run I-Server? 12. How can you make sure that I-Server would be running even if the application mode has crashed and how to get back the instance? 13. What is the difference between RW document and HTML document? 14. What are various authentication modes? 15. How can you configure WH authentication? 16. Does DLS affects MicroStrategy? What you need to do incorporate it? 17. What's smart metric? 18. What's fact table? 19. What is fact constellation schema? What is star schema? What is snowflake schema? 20. Should you have DATE as ID attribute form? 21. What is compound key? 22. What is a bridge/relationship table? 23. How will you resolve double counting in M-M relationship between two attributes? 24. What is Object Manager? 25. What will you do when I-Server crashes? 26. Where is Administrator's password stored? Is it stored in encrypted? 27. What will you do if your Administrator has forgotten password or the account is locked?

28. How can you monitor the error received while running I-Server and report? 29. What is a surrogate key?

30. Why do we use a staging area? 31. Why do we need a DW? 32. Why do we use dimensional modeling in DW? Why not Relational? 33. How much history should we have in a DW? 34. What are the most important tables in a DW? 35. What is a fact and an attribute? 36. What is a batch? 37. Diferences between ROLAP, MOLAP and HOLAP? 38. What is a CUBE? 39. Why Kimball? Why not Inmon? Or vice versa? ;) 40. Performance with a relational based query vs dimensional? 41. What is ETL? 42. What types of DW's are most common abroad? 43. How many MSTR projects have you worked? Explain in detail. 44. Tell us about your Roles & Responsibilities in your project. 45. Have you managed any team for MSTR project? 46. What are the two types of schemas available in DW? 47. Difference between Star schema and Snowflake schema. 48. What schema is used in your project? Why? 49. What are conformed dimensions? 50. What are Factless facts? 51. Explain 2-tier and 3-tier Architecture in MSTR including pros and cons. 52. What is 4-tier architecture? 53. What architecture is used in your project? Why? 54. What are the types of MSTR objects available? 55. Explain Schema objects. (One by one) 56. Have you created any Facts, Attributes for your project? How? 57. What are Transformations? Is there any transformations implemented in your project? Explain the example from your project. 58. What are the features available for MSTR Intelligence Server?

59. Explain Fact Structure. (4 types, one by one) 60. Explain Level Extension. How it is used in your project? 61. Explain Fact Relation. 62. Explain Fact Degradation. 63. Difference between View Filter and Report Filter. 64. What are the different types of Filters available? Explain each with example. 65. What is derived metrics? Explain the example from your project. 66. What is Compound Key Attribute? Give example from your project. 67. Explain VLDB properties in detail. 68. Similar to Visual SourceSafe (VSS) for version controlling, HOW can we achieve the same for Objects in MSTR? 69. Give the step-by-step approach followed for Testing MSTR reports, both from MSTR Desktop and MSTR Web. 70. Have you done any Estimation for MSTR reports? 71. How will you differentiate Simple, Medium and Complex reports while doing estimation for MSTR reports? 72. How to use Templates in MSTR? 73. What are Prompted Filters? 74. What is Bridge table? 75. Where will you customize the display for Null Values? 76. Explain the step-by-step technical approach after you get the Requirements from the Client.

2. What is two-tier connection?

I have heard people saying web is three tier connection in several interview and desktop (with I-server) is a two tier connection. Such answers about tiers really gives me tears. [:)]. You are hear reading this page just mean that you are too lazy to read the MicroStrategy PDFs. Anyways here is the information about various tiers. Anything that doesnt requires I-server is 2 tier. One can have two tier connection not only with Access but also SQL Server, Oracle, Netizza, Teradata, etc, In fact with any damn database. In such case, Desktop and Metadata/Database are two tires. DSN is important in this case. In fact that become heart in 2 tier. You never need to use Configuration Manager in case of a 2 tier connection. Any time you use configuration manager to connect I-Server to Metadata (obviously with DSN) is a three tier. In this case the tiers are, Desktop I-Server Metadata/Database. Any time you use Web is a 4 tier architecture. And tiers are as follows. Web Browser Web Server I-Server Metadata/Database. A 5 tier architecture is also possible. There are various vendors who sell installable reporting tool based on MicroStrategy architecture. In this case the 5th tier sits between Web Browser and Server.

Q)Scan MD and MD Doctor

While working on metadata, there are chances that MD may get corrupt. Only reason for corruption of MD is MicroStrategy programmers NOT you (No way), unless you have manually fiddled with the metadata. One small change can messed the metadata forever, some time impossible to recover. There are two types of discrepancies in MicroStrategy

Logical Physical

ScanMD is used to recover from Logical discrepancies, where as MD Doctor is used for Physical discrepancies. Why these discrepancies creep????? Like any software application, there are bugs in MicroStrategy, dandling code (a situation never programmed), etc. such a thing is the main reason behind discrepancies. Logical discrepancies: Using desktop you can create/delete several objects. Sometime deletion of the objects doesnt get reflected in metadata and they get deleted in metadata but still available in front-end. Now such a mis-match in case of schema objects is simply

killing, because it wont let you update schema at all. . Using ScanMD is not an Imagine not having ability to update schema easy task. ScanMD shows 95% for false errors as discrepancies. Engine team of MicroStrategy, Inc. needs to update the tool. For one error, you may have to go through 100+ errors. You can verify the error easily by having project opened side by side. NEVER EVER FIX A FALSE ERROR. Physical discrepancies: There are not just 10 DSS tables that make metadata, there are several more database objects that are created for metadata; e.g., triggers, views. If any of these objects are messed up, you have a physical discrepancy in your project. Ive never worked on MD Doctor and look forward some information from you. This blog is not exhaustive and 100% as I certainly do not believe the bugs in MicroStrategy are only source of discrepancies in metadata.

Q) Clustering in MicroStrategy
Clustering is a popular strategy in which two or more servers/machines are configured to provide common services in a unified manner such that they behave like a single server. Each machine in the cluster is called a node. Even though it may sound very hi-fi, Clustering is one of the simplest thing in MicroStrategy. It aims for Load balancing as well as fail-over. One can cluster Intelligence server running on differ OS. eg, AIX, UX, Solaris, RH Ent Linux provided following condition are met. 1. All MicroStrategy Intelligence Servers MUST point to the same metadata 2. All MicroStrategy Intelligence Servers MUST have the projects in the same state. (i.e., if Node A has Project A in a Loaded state, then Node B must also have Project A in a Loaded state). 3. From each machine where I-server is installed, one should be able to browse the folders for Cache and History List. (This is aachieved by Samba on Unix Environment)

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