Web Services 

The MicroStrategy platform's complete XML-based, open and server-centric architecture makes it a superior business intelligence platform for Web Services.

Web Services are self-contained, modular business applications based on open standards that allow streamlined integration among multiple disparate applications and environments through a common channel - the Internet. Through the use of common standards, primarily XML and SOAP, Web Services dramatically diminish integration costs making it feasible to share bits and pieces of software functionality over the Internet. For business intelligence (BI), Web Services can unleash value locked away in proprietary systems or departmental applications, while lowering integration costs and increasing deployment speed.

To be a critical BI Web Services provider, BI system must be enterprise-class and have the following characteristics:

• Complete XML-based architecture. Without this, sophisticated adapters or translators have to be developed to publish and consume BI Web Services. These adapters or translators can result in the loss of functionalities and increased development and maintenance costs.
• True open platform with comprehensive SDK that exposes all BI functionalities through Web Services.
• Server-centric architecture provides both cost-effective development and robust deployment for BI Web Services. Developing and deploying Web Services around a strong BI application server backbone that provides all core analytical processing and job management is much easier and more effective than developing and deploying Web Services around multiple loosely coupled BI components. In addition, BI application server’s centralized system management capability, such as load balancing, fault tolerance, security and clustering, enable BI Web Services on top of it to scale to large number of users without performance degradation and system failure.
  

The MicroStrategy Solution

The MicroStrategy platform is uniquely capable of delivering Web Services with the lowest total cost of ownership:

• The MicroStrategy platform architecture is completely XML based. Therefore, there is no need to build sophisticated adapters or translators to expose MicroStrategy BI as Web Services.
• MicroStrategy is a true open platform that exposes all functionality available through comprehensive SDK. The full range of MicroStrategy BI functionality can be exposed through Web Services.
• MicroStrategy Intelligence Server™ is an enterprise-class BI application server that manages all user interactions, provides all core application functionality, manages and routes all system component interaction, and dynamically load balances all system components. With such server-centric processing capability, MicroStrategy BI Web Services can be developed and deployed with the lowest total cost of ownership.

As part of the MicroStrategy SDK™ offering, MicroStrategy Web Services Development Kit™ assists developers in exposing and deploying MicroStrategy 7i functionality as Web Services. MicroStrategy APIs have both J2EE compliant version and COM based version. Therefore, MicroStrategy Web Services can deploy on either J2EE or .NET framework.