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Implementing MicroStrategy against SAP HANA Ryan Cook | Senior Business Intelligence Developer

© 2014 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential.

Who am I?

§  Adobe Systems Incorporated §  HANA Implementation Technical Lead §  Lead MicroStrategy Architect

§  Nu Skin International §  Business Intelligence Manager §  Global MSTR implementation


Who is my audience?

1.  Already Implemented MSTR against HANA 1.  Looking for ways to improve your implementation

2.  Thinking about Implementing HANA 1.  Looking for gotchas and best practices

3.  Anyone else?


Usage

§  2700 Cumulative Users

§  1200+ unique users per quarter §  WWFO = Sales

§  Killer App à Delivering their goals via MSTR §  Others

§  Sexy dashboards §  Formatted reports


Examples


HANA paradigm

§  Data Modeling §  HANA has it built in

§  Attribute views à Attributes §  Analytic views à Facts + Attributes §  Calculation views

§  Attribute views unioned or joined together §  Custom SQL

§  Analytic Privileges à Security Filters… not really §  Grant security access to views


Implementation

§  Push as much to the HANA layer as possible 1.  Make the data available for Analysis for Excel users

1.  SAP’s basic tool for querying HANA 2.  You want the same answers in both tools

2.  Speed optimization 1.  Calculation view engine is the fastest one in HANA

3.  SAP Support 1.  Don’t join Analytic Views together


Learning 1

§  Desire: Have everything in one place §  Use attributes for multiple subject areas §  Maintain appearance of single source of truth

§  Decision: One big project §  Folder security for subject areas

§  Benefits §  Searching for content across subject areas is easy for users

§  Don’t use this a whole lot §  Use links to reports from SFDC or a web portal


Learning 1 (cont)

§  Lessons learned §  Migrations lock all users out of saving reports §  Multi-sourcing VLDB issues

§  The only VLDB settings used are those for the primary instance. Period.

§  Attributes are not reused because of security management §  Use a project per subject area §  Security filters for one area mess up the caching for other subject areas

§  Caches can only be accessed with a unique combination of SQL and Security Filters §  Overcome this with Intelligent Cubes

§  Metadata takes a long time to update §  Migration mistakes in one area can affect the other areas


Learning 2

§  Desire: Don’t cache data in MSTR or on mobile devices §  Avoid security concerns around data being “out there”

§  Decision: Turn off caching §  Lessons learned

§  HANA’s fast, but it ain’t THAT fast §  Learned almost out of the gate that this wasn’t going to work §  Use Intelligent Cubes whenever you feel caching will be needed

§  Caches are picky about when a user accesses them §  As of 9.4.1 (I think) you can use security filters against cubes

§  Aggregate data in HANA §  SAP may try to tell you that you don’t need to do this. They’re wrong.


Learning 3

§  Desire: HANA security is all we need §  Keep security in one place, only against the database

§  Decision: Try it §  Lessons learned

§  Database connection uses a single ID §  Didn’t want users to bypass the BI tool to go to the DB (not giving them logins to the

DB directly) §  A lot of overhead creating HANA security §  Can’t take advantage of MSTR caching §  Use MSTR security


Learning 4

§  Desire: Replicate the data and query §  Decision: Aggregate the data §  Lessons Learned

§  SLT is fantastic §  The data needs to be aggregated


Bits and Bobs

§  Always Group By §  Analytic views need a group by clause in order to function in most cases

§  Set the VLDB setting for this

§  Uncheck this box for every Analytic view

§  Don’t use calculations in MSTR Attributes

§  Can crash the DB when they are pulled into the group by clause §  (Hopefully we’ve solved this bug, but it should be at the HANA layer anyway)


Questions?

Contact info: [email protected]

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