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Technical Breakthroughs and Business
Benefits
MicroStrategy 8 is a breakthrough extension
of the MicroStrategy 7 architecture that now allows busi-nesses to extend
the richness of MicroStrategy business intelligence to many more diverse
business people, and to use it to manage many more facets of business
performance. MicroStrategy 8 embod-ies eight major technical breakthroughs
that deliver four major business benefits:
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Business Benefit: Bringing World-class Business Intelligence to All of Your Business Users |
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1.
Redesigned MicroStrategy 8 Web Interface
:
MicroStrategy 8 introduces a newly streamlined user
interface specifically tailored for the business person and optimized
for high productivity. The new user interface includes a
dramatic new array of “one-click” actions embedded throughout
the interface to make business users highly productive in their
viewing and exploration of data. It is designed with a new look
and feel that is cleaner, and exposes functionality gradually to
users as they need it. It uses more windows-like paradigms such as
dialog boxes, mouse-over tool tips, and undo/redo buttons to make
it easy for business people to explore the software without prior
training.
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View new user interface
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Business Benefit: Setting a New Standard for Enterprise Reporting and Scorecards |
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2.
Fully Interactive Reporting:
MicroStrategy 8 has extended the MicroStrategy reporting capability
by making all reports and scorecards fully interactive. Business
users can now rearrange the organization of any report with simple
drag-n-drop actions or by clicking on the new toolbar icons to get
entirely new views of the data, all from the same report and without
requiring assistance from IT.
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View interactive reporting features
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3.
Seamless Integration of Analysis in
Every Report or Scorecard:
MicroStrategy 8 now makes this same powerful analytic capability
available directly from every enterprise report or scorecard automatically.
MicroStrategy 8 delivers analytic integration to reporting users
in two ways. The first way is by providing OLAP capabilities directly
to tables embedded within report documents, allowing business users
to analyze the data within the table while staying within the context
of the bigger report document. The second way allows users to “drill”
from a report document to a dedicated analysis view that is optimized
for conducting detailed analysis. In both cases, the integration
of reporting with analysis is automatic and is entirely seamless
for the business user.
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View Integrated Report
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4.
WYSIWYG Report Design:
MicroStrategy 8 extends report design capability beyond the power
users and report designers to now include the business person. For
the first time in the industry, MicroStrategy 8 enables business
users to design and refine reports in full WYSIWYG mode through
a zero-footprint Web interface. WYSIWYG design means that every
business user already possesses the innate skills needed to design
or refine a MicroStrategy report because they are the same skills
they use with PowerPoint or Excel. WYSIWYG design represents a radically
simpler model for designing reports, and makes it possible for average
business people to “tune” reports to look exactly like
they want them to look, without endless and time consuming iterations
with professional report designers.
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View Report Design Mode
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Business Benefit:
Accessing All Data Throughout the Enterprise, Beyond the Data
Warehouses |
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5.
Direct Access to Multidimensional Data Sources (SAP BW, Microsoft Analysis Services, Hyperion Essbase):
MicroStrategy 8 now incorporates a new additional dynamic data access engine in its architecture. This new engine is designed to access multi-dimensional databases (MDDBs or OLAP Cube Databases) such as those from SAP Business Information Warehouse (BW) databases, Microsoft Analysis Services and Hyperion Essbase. MicroStrategy 8’s new Dynamic MDX Engine generates optimized MDX syntax that is fully certified with SAP BW using SAP’s high performance BAPI interfaces. To connect to Microsoft Analysis Services and Hyperion Essbase, MicroStrategy 8 uses industry standard of XML for Analysis (XMLA). Because MicroStrategy’s MDX is dynamically generated using the multidimensional models implicit in SAP BW, Microsoft Analysis Services and Hyperion Essbase, users can automatically and transparently drill back into these cube structures for more data, without any prior programming or prior design of drill paths. MicroStrategy 8 can also join data across these cube structures as well as access multiple instances of SAP BW, Microsoft Analysis Services and Hyperion Essbase at once.
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View
Platform connection to SAP BW
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6.
Direct Access to Operational Data (From ERP Systems):
MicroStrategy 8 extends the MicroStrategy metadata architecture
to include attributes and facts accessed directly from non-modeled
databases, instantly on a query-by-query basis. MicroStrategy 8’s
new Operational SQL Engine enables MicroStrategy reports to include
data from any operational system using completely free-form SQL,
including stored procedures and views. Since the attributes
and facts from operational database sources are managed by the MicroStrategy
metadata architecture, MicroStrategy’s security architecture
and other reusable objects
such as prompts can automatically be applied. Users familiar with the source database tables and columns use the Query Builder to define ad-hoc queries. The Query Builder generates SQL to access data directly from any operational system.
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View
Platform connection to operational data
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7.
Heterogeneous Joining of Data From Across the Enterprise:
MicroStrategy 8 extends the MicroStrategy data modeling flexibility
to include integrated views of data across heterogeneous data stores.
By mapping conforming dimensions from different sources within the
MicroStrategy object model, MicroStrategy 8 can automatically join
data from multiple different sources in the same report document.
Data can come from any source accessible by MicroStrategy 8, including
the data warehouse, data marts, SAP BW, and any number of operational
system databases
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View Integrated Report
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Business Benefit: Bringing Data Mining Insight into Mainstream Business Usage |
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8.
Integrating Best-of-Breed Data Mining
into Mainstream Reports & Analyses:
MicroStrategy 8 has extended its analytic engine with “Data
Mining Services” capability that allows reports and analyses
to include predictive capabilities in every MicroStrategy report
or analysis. MicroStrategy 8’s analytic engine can now calculate
four of the primary data mining functions including neural network
algorithms, clustering algorithms, regression algorithms, and tree
algorithms. Hand in hand with this new calculation capability, MicroStrategy
8 also includes the new ability to import data mining models directly
from best-of-breed data mining products from vendors like IBM, SAS and SPSS using the new PMML or predictive modeling mark-up
language standard. With this capability, any data mining model can
be imported through a single click and automatically converted into
a standard MicroStrategy metric. After that, MicroStrategy’s
Data Mining Service extension lets those new metrics be used freely
in reports, analyses, and alerts where they are calculated on the
fly as any other metric.
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View
Data Mining Results
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