MicroStrategy Interview Questions 101

1. What is metadata?

2. What is two-tier connection?

3. What is three-tier connection?

4. What is difference between 2 and 3 tier connection?

5. What is ScanMD?

6. What is MD Doctor?

7. What is clustering?

8. How do you achieve schema object version control (similar to VSS)?

9. What are different kinds of objects in MicroStrategy?

10. How will you reset password of all users?

11. What are different modes you can run I-Server?

12. How can you make sure that I-Server would be running even if the application mode has crashed and how to get back the instance?

13. What is the difference between RW document and HTML document?

14. What are various authentication modes?

15. How can you configure WH authentication?

16. Does DLS affects MicroStrategy? What you need to do incorporate it?

17. What's smart metric?

18. What's fact table?

19. What is fact constellation schema? What is star schema? What is snowflake schema?

20. Should you have DATE as ID attribute form?

21. What is compound key?

22. What is a bridge/relationship table?

23. How will you resolve double counting in M-M relationship between two attributes?

24. What is Object Manager?

25. What will you do when I-Server crashes?

26. Where is Administrator's password stored? Is it stored in encrypted?

27. What will you do if your Administrator has forgotten password or the account is locked?

28. How can you monitor the error received while running I-Server and report?

29. What is a surrogate key?

30. Why do we use a staging area?

31. Why do we need a DW?

32. Why do we use dimensional modeling in DW? Why not Relational?

33. How much history should we have in a DW?

34. What are the most important tables in a DW?

35. What is a fact and an attribute?

36. What is a batch?

37. Diferences between ROLAP, MOLAP and HOLAP?

38. What is a CUBE?

39. Why Kimball? Why not Inmon? Or vice versa? ;)

40. Performance with a relational based query vs dimensional?

41. What is ETL?

42. What types of DW's are most common abroad?

43. How many MSTR projects have you worked? Explain in detail.

44. Tell us about your Roles & Responsibilities in your project.

45. Have you managed any team for MSTR project?

46. What are the two types of schemas available in DW?

47. Difference between Star schema and Snowflake schema.

48. What schema is used in your project? Why?

49. What are conformed dimensions?

50. What are Factless facts?

51. Explain 2-tier and 3-tier Architecture in MSTR including pros and cons.

52. What is 4-tier architecture?

53. What architecture is used in your project? Why?

54. What are the types of MSTR objects available?

55. Explain Schema objects. (One by one)

56. Have you created any Facts, Attributes for your project? How?

57. What are Transformations? Is there any transformations implemented in your project? Explain the example from your project.

58. What are the features available for MSTR Intelligence Server?

59. Explain Fact Structure. (4 types, one by one)

60. Explain Level Extension. How it is used in your project?

61. Explain Fact Relation.

62. Explain Fact Degradation.

63. Difference between View Filter and Report Filter.

64. What are the different types of Filters available? Explain each with example.

65. What is derived metrics? Explain the example from your project.

66. What is Compound Key Attribute? Give example from your project.

67. Explain VLDB properties in detail.

68. Similar to Visual SourceSafe (VSS) for version controlling, HOW can we achieve the same for Objects in MSTR?

69. Give the step-by-step approach followed for Testing MSTR reports, both from MSTR Desktop and MSTR Web.

70. Have you done any Estimation for MSTR reports?

71. How will you differentiate Simple, Medium and Complex reports while doing estimation for MSTR reports?

72. How to use Templates in MSTR?

73. What are Prompted Filters?

74. What is Bridge table?

75. Where will you customize the display for Null Values?

76. Explain the step-by-step technical approach after you get the Requirements from the Client.

Will be updating as and when I think of more questions. This is my list of question I generally ask if ask to interview a candidate. But keep in mind, this is just for initial cut off. Second round will have unique practical questions. Depends upon how much you have got to explore MicroStrategy.

Finally out of MicroStratgy project at Cybage

Well it happened in March or something, but I didn't ask anyone about it. Cybage has a practice of not introducing a newbie unless he is well versed, but worse is if you are replacing someone good who left company/project, you will not be introduced to MicroStratgy for a real long time. I was a undisputed defect (main deliverable to client) finder within 2 months but I was introduced to MicroStrategy only after release of 8.0. They took 202 days to introduced me to MicroStrategy. They gave me absurd reason about having introduced 3 people who joined after me. This is sad story of Cybage all together.

BTW, I was (kinda) demoted by having shifted to Front-End team from Back-End team on MicroStrategy in Cybage. Reason, I used to wear (and still) funky cloths to office, Limp Bizkit style. Frond-End team does QA of Desktop products and Administration where as Back-End team does QA of Configuration settings and NCS. Bank-End testing has steep learning curve. I do not know Narrowcast Server and Customization well. I was categorically kept away from both.

In spite of all these, MicroStrategy@Cyabge was the best job. It was all new technology. Getting trained by some of real hardcore guys. Person responsible for Analytical Engine (Hani) has been working at MicroStratgy for a decade and he is a gem of person. He has showed us the bugs in MicroStrategy in a hardcore technical manner. I really really liked that. I know how to fake the output of a report completely. There is a secret tool using which you can directly communicate to MicroStrategy Metadata. Last but not least, you can created a report using the Object IDs. Yes, just using Object IDs. But that tool (I won't name it) is full of bugs. When I sat full, really full. That has been created by Engine team for internal use and they know to use it. There are no checks, you can enter whatever you want, but these guys won't go wrong.

This partiality is a common issue with Cybage. I know it is everywhere but Cybage has to 3-4 times more than the companies I work after leaving Cybage. Specially you feel sucked when your PM (Gurvinder Singh Chhatwal) tries to discredit you for the appreciation that you receive from Client. MicroStrategy is considered a client who will not easily appreciate offshore employees, but I received appreciation for "delaying 8.0 SP2 UNIX build for more than two weeks". I not only found a show stopper issue with the build that was going to be GA also gave them the workaround. When client appreciated the same, there was a long mail then usually sent by MicroStrategy and it was full of talking about that UNIX issue I uncovered, PM forwarded to All Managers to CEO he just forgot to mention me. When I asked his about the same, he asked to do that next time and he would definitely do it. Man, you don't have Olympic every day or month. Don't wanna say anything more than this. BTW, my PL, for whom I was a bone of contention, left Cybage and has joined MicroStrategy. This guy named Paramjeet Singh Sidhu (valid Orkut login required) is a a best guy in fixing and setting up and office politics. All people who left Cybage while he being the PL, mainly due to the fact that he wouldn't have let them grow in the team. This guy will go to any level of politics for progress. Some happiness taht Lopea (SR QA Manager) is among my connection on LinkedIn.

Tubthumping

Today was a so-so morning. I got up by 9:45. Gawd, that was too late. Generally I get up by 9 on holidays without any problem. Otherwise, I feel dizzy even if I get by by 8:30. Mainly due to the fact that I go to bed by 2 and sleep by 3 or something. My life style (or being a not changing the late night book/magazine reading habit) is main reason.

I gave another rinse to the cloths had good bath. Thought to make tea of my own, but I screwed up as I added milk powder into hot water. My bad. Don't like walking even though the tea shop is just a 30 seconds walk from home. My knee pains constantly as I have started wearing shoes for last two weeks. Today, I am wearing ¾ pant after a long time. Finally I had got it washed (and dried) after a long long time.

Right now my Winamp play-list contain my old (and gold) fav, like Chumbawamba - Tubthumping, Madonna - Beautiful Stranger, Goo Goo Dolls - Iris, Smash Mouth - I'm a believer, U2 - Where the streets have No Name.

After a real long time

Today was going to be a hectic day. But luckily it wasn’t. Last evening when I finished CMAS LoanIQ audit, I realized that lots of binning was not so good. But I was happy to as it was for the first time I was performing Audit independently. Mani was not leave. This Audit is too good. I haven’t received any feedback/comment on Audits I had done in last two days. Damien and we were too busy to waste time on this. He was assigning new work as we were proceeding with the tasks. I corrected the Audit. For correction I took a bit of time as even one variable is not so properly audited, whole audit has to be run oven again. Not really a painful thing but why to have iteration. I already had enough of iteration and now know how to capture variables properly.

Just at 12:15 we get a mail about status meeting to be held on November 9^th. I immediately replied to Damien letting him know about it. He immediately posted a meeting request for 12:45. Well, no one had his home number and around 15 minutes were spent locating his number. I asked Mani about the mails to be replied to Rong and Eddie, so that he has loan and vector “scored” file for audit ready when he comes back to office on Monday. Now I have a big job: Population Report. I have never seen and worked on it. All I know that Mani uses an Excel file for report. With lot of limping I finished the performance report. It took me triple time then I had expected for myself. Mainly due to COLUMN Names having spaces in it. It already delayed the audit and also the population report. It is good that I’m seeing a tough time. It will make me good.

Rajendra, whom I had requested to change weird of storing date to perfect one, wanted to leave and he had not completed what I was looking for but had almost solved the pain. It took me just 30 minutes to workaround the numeric dates to be perfect in chart. There are lots of problems when we show month in a Pivot chart. One can play around with its format in Report but in chart it is painful and if I get text in chart, sorting is jumbled up. Hats off to Rajendra for helping out in this time. He has also created some more pivot reports and chart which are eye candy. Even the people in PartyGaming PLC could not make such graph.

Now I have huge task for playing around with SAS® dates. I have to map lots of fields to a source file based on some criteria, but SAS dates conversion is a tricky thing. I could not do it w/o some guidance; at least for the first time also there were SQL included in this. I am still not well versed with hand writing SQLs, though I’m too good in troubleshooting it. I decide to send a mail with status and leave, even though that was just 4:15. BTW, whole floor was empty by lunch.

I come home by 5:00. Had to rinse cloths for a week, they were lying in bucket without any attention. It had started generating a characteristic bad odor. It happens if let your cloth soaked for 7 + days. I decide to do it after cleaning the home. Took me around half and hour to do it. I stay alone in a 3 BHK (1600 sq feet) flat. I rinse the cloths but don’t let it hang for drying. I consider letting cloth dry in night a bad omen. So not room but the bathroom where cloth were lying had that smell, though its intensity was not so worse.

On even of Diwali, I must eat something good. I was bored of eating in US chain restraints. So I decide to ride 7 km to go to a Vada pao shop. I was not hungry so I didn’t find Vada-pao really good. I had a Grill Sandwich too. This shop in Indira Nagar (Mumbai Masti) serves ethnic Mumbai Vada Pao. I like it a lot. Had a stomach full of junk food.

I used to write my blogs locally and intended to publish them when having got internet connection, but I lost all those blogs in a HDD crash. But In brief, I have started working for a Mortgage Analytics company. I’ve just completed 3 months over here. I have finished more than 3 years on MicroStrategy now. Mervyn, whom I consider my best friend, has got married now. Randolf’s dad, who is a real noble soul, had gone into coma and after having recovered had lost his 15 years memory. Miraculously he has completely recovered. I think God for this. Telis uncle is the most harmless (world is rude) I have met in life. My nephew Utkarsh has started talking a lot and can talk non stop. I subscribed to LinkedIn, my only subscription in last 7 years after Google. I’m too much concerned about online privacy. I know Google is the Privacy beast. I’ve rented a flat close to office. I’ve got all things here including a DTH connection. My marriage plans are in full swing. Parents are seeking all proposals very seriously. He won’t get time for me, but these people he has lots of time. I just hate it. Last but not least. I feel my father loved his grandchildren (my nephews and nieces) more than me and I just feel damn damn jealous. I have first right of their love and affection. He had gone to planetarium with them, where I could go only because of school trip.