Features | Benefits | FAQs

1. What is MicroStrategy Intelligence Server™?
MicroStrategy Intelligence Server is the industry's most advanced, secure and scalable business intelligence server.

2. What does MicroStrategy Intelligence Server allow users to do?
MicroStrategy Intelligence Server provides reporting and OLAP analysis for the whole enterprise. All business users can obtain scorecards and dashboards, operational reports, queries and analyses without learning any programming or database syntax.

3. What are the benefits of using MicroStrategy Intelligence Server?
MicroStrategy Intelligence Server provides one central spot for all users' reporting and OLAP analysis. MicroStrategy Intelligence Server also provides scalability to analyze any amount of data, support for any number of users and a 24 X 7 operating environment, all with a robust security architecture.

4. Does MicroStrategy Intelligence Server run on Windows or UNIX?
MicroStrategy Intelligence Server is certified on both Windows and UNIX operating systems. MicroStrategy Intelligence Server has been designed to be a completely open architecture built on industry standards and designed to run on multiple operating systems.

Windows operating systems currently supported are Windows 2000 Server and Advanced Server, and Windows 2003 Standard or Enterprise Edition. UNIX operating systems currently supported are IBM AIX 5.2, Sun Solaris 8 and Sun Solaris 9.

Please consult the product Readme file for the latest information about specific patch versions that are supported.

5. How do you ensure simultaneous releases across multiple operating systems?
MicroStrategy Intelligence Server consists of a single set of code. That source code is in turn simply compiled appropriately for each certified operating system. As a result, a feature or fix only has to be designed and coded once, rather than coded separately for each operating system as many of our competitors must do. The result of MicroStrategy's unique architecture and single code base is a more efficient development process that allows MicroStrategy to release Intelligence Server on all certified operating systems at the same time.

6. Does MicroStrategy Intelligence Server run on 32-bit or 64-bit systems?
Yes. In fact MicroStrategy Intelligence Server provides an industry first -- a common code base architecture for all supported 32 or 64-bit operating systems. This single code base ensures that the latest functionality is always available on all these operating systems at the same time.

7. What are the advantages of running a BI server on a 64-bit operating system?
Running on a 64-bit system, your BI application can access much greater memory resources than it could on a 32-bit system. With more addressable memory for your BI server, you can have more reports, larger reports, better performance and more users - all with fewer servers. Organizations can combine MicroStrategy's industry leading scalability with the advantages of 64-bit UNIX to deploy the richest BI applications, with the highest performance and the most users.

8. Do users need to learn any programming languages or database syntax to run business queries?
No, business users can run any query without learning any programming languages or database syntax. MicroStrategy Intelligence Server automatically and appropriately processes all business questions by accessing a report cache or Intelligent Cube, or by generating dynamic and optimized SQL that is specific to each database platform.

9. What is a cache?
A cache is a file created by MicroStrategy Intelligence Server that contains the data and properties of a report. The cache can be stored on memory and disk. When users ask for report data that is cached, the Intelligence Server will retrieve the data from disk or memory instead of going directly against the data warehouse. Cache creation and usage leverages other users' work, increases query performance and reduces the workload on the data warehouse.

10. What are Intelligent Cubes™?
Intelligent Cubes™ are cached report data stored in the Intelligence Server memory. While accessing an Intelligent Cube, users can easily add or remove report objects (such as attributes and metrics), add new metric calculations and filter their view of the data - all in an ad-hoc fashion with speed of thought response times.

11. Can MicroStrategy Intelligence Server support my corporate users?
Yes. MicroStrategy Intelligence Server supports your existing users. In fact, corporations can start with a small investment and gradually grow as more users are added to their system. This is achieved through next-generation clustering, caching and security features that allow your users to access and analyze corporate data without loss in performance.

12. Can MicroStrategy Intelligence Server access any amount of data?
Yes. MicroStrategy Intelligence Server can scale to any amount of data by leveraging your database's strengths. Using Very Large Database (VLDB) drivers MicroStrategy Intelligence Server automatically tunes its operations to leverage the unique strengths of your database software and hardware.

13. Can MicroStrategy Intelligence Server scale easily and cost effectively based on my growing needs?
Yes. MicroStrategy Intelligence Server provides out of the box clustering capability that permits corporations to leverage their initial investments and gradually scale as more users and data are added to the system.

14. Can my users perform on-demand analyses without any downtime?
Yes. MicroStrategy Intelligence Server provides complete fault tolerance and fail-over support to maximize uptime of your application.

15. Will my users get the performance they need?
Yes. MicroStrategy Intelligence Server maximizes system performance at all layers of your system. Intelligence Server:

• Leverages the unique strengths of each database software and hardware using VLDB drivers.
• Increases performance through mid-tier level caching with its Intelligent Cubes™ functionality. Users or administrators can exploit low usage time periods by scheduling creation or refreshing of Intelligent Cubes™.
• Minimizes network traffic by sending users only the result sets they want to view.

16. What types of analyses does MicroStrategy Intelligence Server support?
MicroStrategy Intelligence Server users can easily perform simple to sophisticated analyses such as basic performance indicators, market basket, churn, retention and deciling analyses. Users can make use of a complete library of statistical, mathematical, financial and OLAP functions. Other types of analyses include hypothesis testing, regressions, extrapolations and bond calculations.

17. Can I use my homegrown functions or integrate with existing third party statistical software?
Yes. MicroStrategy Intelligence Server allows enterprises to integrate their homegrown functions as well as third party software using an advanced plug-and-play architecture.

18. What type of security does MicroStrategy Intelligence Server provide?
MicroStrategy Intelligence Server provides a highly robust security model at four different layers in your system:

1. User level - Login and ID authentication ensure users have authorization to access the MicroStrategy 8 system.
2. Application level - Access control lists and user privileges ensure proper access to MicroStrategy 8 objects and functionality.
3. Data transmission level - Encryption and dual firewall configuration ensure safe transmission of data.
4. Data level - Security filters ensure users access only the data they have authorization to view.

19. Can my users access MicroStrategy Intelligence Server using their LDAP or Windows login?
Yes. MicroStrategy Intelligence Server integrates with LDAP and Windows security systems. Users will only need to login with their LDAP or Windows login to access MicroStrategy projects through Intelligence Server.

20. Can my administrator easily maintain and manage MicroStrategy Intelligence Server?
Yes. MicroStrategy Intelligence Server's centralized architecture provides one console from which all maintenance and administration can be performed. In addition, a standardized data dictionary (Metadata) for enterprise reporting and OLAP analysis enables reusable reporting objects and concepts.

21. Does MicroStrategy have Windows- or UNIX-based administration tools?
MicroStrategy has both Windows- and UNIX-based administration tools. UNIX-based administration is provided through a Java-based Control Center. Both the Windows based administration tools and the Java-based Control Center provide local or remote administration and monitoring of MicroStrategy Intelligence Server.

22. What are the supported languages for MicroStrategy Intelligence Server?
MicroStrategy Intelligence Server is available in English (US and UK), French, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese (Brazilian), Swedish, Chinese (Simplified), Korean and Japanese.

23. Does MicroStrategy Intelligence Server integrate with other system management software?
Yes. MicroStrategy Intelligence Server integrates with other system management software. In fact, all inner statistics of Intelligence Server are published to Performance Monitor and diagnostic logs. As a result, third party system management software such as IBM® Tivoli® or CA's Unicenter® can remotely monitor these statistics.

24. Does MicroStrategy Intelligence Server support scheduling?
Yes, MicroStrategy Intelligence Server supports time-based and event-based schedules. These schedules automatically trigger report execution and place a notification message in the user's History folder upon completion.

25. Why is MicroStrategy Intelligence Server better than competitor's products?
MicroStrategy Intelligence Server wins over its competitors because it solves all issues that corporations face when implementing a query, reporting and analysis solution. MicroStrategy Intelligence Server provides the solutions required for a successful enterprise business intelligence system: full range of analysis, support for any number of users, support for any amount of data, iron clad security, world-class reliability, easy administration and maintenance, and high performance.

26. How long does it take to deploy MicroStrategy Intelligence Server?
MicroStrategy Intelligence Server installs in minutes and automatically presents a configuration wizard to connect to the database. Within an hour, the installation and setup can be completed.

27. Can Intelligence Server integrate with my existing data structure?
Yes. MicroStrategy Intelligence Server easily integrates with your existing data structure with its support for the major types of schemas like Star, Snowflake, Hybrid, Denormalized, Normalized, and Aggregated Schema.

28. How does Intelligence Server integrate with the rest of the MicroStrategy platform?
MicroStrategy Intelligence Server is the analytical server that processes all requests from all MicroStrategy end users. Intelligence Server is the central product that links all MicroStrategy components to the data warehouse.

29. What data sources does Intelligence Server support?
You can access data in all major databases including Oracle®, IBM DB2®, Microsoft® SQL Server, Microsoft Access®, Teradata®, Sybase®, Red Brick®, Informix®, NonStop SQL/MP and Netezza®.

30. To save time, can many reports be run at the same time and at the user level?
Yes. MicroStrategy Intelligence Server can execute multiple reports simultaneously. Then, when report results are ready they are saved in a personal History folder.

31. Does Intelligence Server support XML?
Yes. MicroStrategy Intelligence Server uses XML for data transfer. This enables organizations to present information from Intelligence Server to end users through multiple mediums including the Web, email and wireless.