MicroStrategy OCF Connector: Overview

Alation Cloud Service Applies to Alation Cloud Service instances of Alation

Customer Managed Applies to customer-managed instances of Alation

The OCF connector for MicroStrategy is developed by Alation and is available as a Zip file. You can upload and install the Zip file in the Alation application.

The latest MicroStrategy OCF connector package can be downloaded from the Connector Hub on the Alation Customer Portal. Ask an Alation admin with access to the Customer Portal to download the connector from the Connectors section (Customer Portal > Connectors).

This connector should be used to catalog MicroStrategy Cloud and MicroStrategy On-premise (version 2021 and later) as a data source on Alation on-premise and Cloud Service instances. It extracts MicroStrategy objects such as projects, folders, reports, report fields, documents, dossiers, and cubes. After the metadata is extracted, it is represented in the data catalog as a hierarchy of catalog pages under the parent BI source. Alation users can leverage the full catalog functionality to search for and find the extracted metadata, curate the corresponding catalog pages, create documentation about the data source, and exchange information.

Team

The following administrators are required to install this connector:

  • MicroStrategy Admin:

    • Provides the connection information

    • Provides the SSL certificate

    • Creates a service account with the necessary permissions

  • Alation Server Admin:

    • Installs the connector

    • Creates a BI source

    • Configures the BI source

Scope

The table below describes which metadata objects this connector extracts and which operations are supported.

Feature

Scope

Availability

MicroStrategy BI source

The MicroStrategy instance is represented as a BI source.

Yes

Projects

Extract projects

Yes

Folders

Extract folders

Yes

Reports

Extract reports in a project.

Yes

Report prompts

Extract the prompts that appear in reports.

No

Prompted reports

Extract the prompted reports in a project.

Yes*

Report attributes

Extract reports attributes in reports.

Yes

Report metrics

Extract dimensions, measures, and measure expressions of report objects.

Yes

Report derived metrics

Extract derived metrics of reports.

No

Report owner

Extract information about the owner or author who created the report.

Yes

Report previews

Extract report previews.

No

Dossiers and documents

Extract dossiers and documents.

Yes

Dossiers or documents attribute and metrics

Extract attributes and metrics of dossiers and documents.

Yes

Dossier owner or documents owner

Extract information about the owner or author who created dossiers or documents.

Yes

Dossiers or document derived metrics

Extract derived metrics of dossiers or documents.

No

Cubes

Extract dimensions and measure of a dashboard object.

Yes

Cubes metric and attributes

Ability to show a thumbnail image of reports and dashboards.

Yes

Cubes owner

Extract information about the owners or authors who created a cube.

Yes

Connections

Extract connection objects.

Yes

Document or Document previews

Extract document or dossier preview image.

Yes

Lineage

Ability to generate lineage for the BI source including report level lineage.

Yes

Cross-System lineage

Ability to generate lineage between the BI source and a data source.

Yes

Popularity

No

* Answering the prompts is not supported, so the extracted reports can have some missing field information.

MicroStrategy Object Hierarchy

The following diagram shows the hierarchy of MicroStrategy objects and how they are cataloged in Alation:

../../../_images/MicrostrategyOCF_01.png

Connector API Methods

MicroStrategy APIs used by this connector to extract metadata are described below:

Type

API Endpoint

Description

Authentication

POST : {BaseUrl}/MicroStrategyLibrary/ api/auth/login

Get the access token for authentication.

All users

GET : {BaseUrl}/MicroStrategyLibrary/ api/users

Get all users.

User groups

GET : {BaseUrl}/MicroStrategyLibrary/ api/usergroups

Get all user groups of MicroStrategy.

All projects

GET : {BaseUrl}/MicroStrategyLibrary/ api/projects

Get the list of all projects.

All folders

GET : {BaseUrl}/MicroStrategyLibrary/api/ folders/preDefined/7 {BaseUrl}/MicroStrategyLibrary/api/ folders/preDefined/20

Gets the response of all the folders inside a project. `7 - The value 7 is used for my_folders 20 - The value 20 is used for shared_folders

Project permissions

GET : {BaseUrl}/MicroStrategyLibrary/ api/objects/$projectID?type=32

Gets permissions for a project for which the ID is passed.

All permissions

POST : {BaseUrl}/MicroStrategyLibrary/ %type_of_objects

GET : {BaseUrl}/MicroStrategyLibrary/api /metadataSearches/results?searchId= %id_from_get_call

This call reach a search id with which the metadataSearch has to be called to get list of all objects and permissions.

Cubes

getCubeDefinition

Gets cubes, cube attributes and fields.

Documents and dossiers

getDossier/DocDefinition

Gets documents and dossiers definition.

Reports

getReportDefinition

Gets reports and their attributes.

Dashboards (Document or Dossier) images

exportToPDF

Gets images of documents or dossiers.

IServer Node ID

getClusterNodes

Gets the nodes of the cluster this node id will be used in subsequent Cube Cache Calls.

All Cube Caches

getAllCubeCaches

Gets all the cube cache information from which we get to know cube cache ID Filters used are cube-id.

Cube Cache by ID

getCubeCacheByID

Get the cube cache information for in-memeory published cubes from which datasource names will be extracted.

All Datasources

getAllDatasourcesAPI

Gets all the datasources of the Microstrategy instance.

Datasource by ID

getDatasourceByID

Get the datasource information from which host, port, dbType are extracted.

Cube SQLViewAPI

getCubeSQLView

Gets the SQL statement denoting the fields and tables being used in Cube.