MicroStrategy vs.

SAS

A Comparison White Paper by MicroStrategy

The information contained in this document is confidential and proprietary to MicroStrategy Incorporated. The recipient of this document agrees not to disclose its contents to any third party or otherwise to use this
document for any purpose other than an evaluation of MicroStrategy’s business or its offerings. Reproduction or distribution of this document is prohibited without MicroStrategy’s advance written authorization.
MicroStrategy does not guarantee the accuracy of any information presented in this document, and there is no commitment, express or implied, on the part of MicroStrategy to update or otherwise amend this
document. The furnishing of this document does not provide any license to patents, trademarks, copyrights or other intellectual property rights owned or held by MicroStrategy.

Copyright Information

All Contents Copyright © 2007 MicroStrategy Incorporated. All Rights Reserved.

MicroStrategy, MicroStrategy 6, MicroStrategy 7, MicroStrategy 7i, MicroStrategy 7i Evaluation Edition, MicroStrategy 7i Olap Services, MicroStrategy 8, MicroStrategy Evaluation Edition, MicroStrategy Administrator,
MicroStrategy Agent, MicroStrategy Architect, MicroStrategy BI Developer Kit, MicroStrategy Broadcast Server, MicroStrategy Broadcaster, MicroStrategy Broadcaster Server, MicroStrategy Business Intelligence Platform,
MicroStrategy Consulting, MicroStrategy CRM Applications, MicroStrategy Customer Analyzer, MicroStrategy Desktop, MicroStrategy Desktop Analyst, MicroStrategy Desktop Designer, MicroStrategy eCRM 7,
MicroStrategy Education, MicroStrategy eTrainer, MicroStrategy Executive, MicroStrategy Infocenter, MicroStrategy Intelligence Server, MicroStrategy Intelligence Server Universal Edition, MicroStrategy MDX Adapter,
MicroStrategy Narrowcast Server, MicroStrategy Objects, MicroStrategy OLAP Provider, MicroStrategy SDK, MicroStrategy Support, MicroStrategy Telecaster, MicroStrategy Transactor, MicroStrategy Web, MicroStrategy
Web Business Analyzer, MicroStrategy World, Alarm, Alarm.com, Alert.com, Angel, Angel.com, Application Development and Sophisticated Analysis, Best In Business Intelligence, Centralized Application Management,
Changing The Way Government Looks At Information, DSSArchitect, DSS Broadcaster, DSS Broadcaster Server, DSS Office, DSSServer, DSS Subscriber, DSS Telecaster, DSSWeb, eBroadcaster, eCaster, eStrategy,
eTelecaster, Information Like Water, Insight Is Everything, Intelligence Through Every Phone, Your Telephone Just Got Smarter, Intelligence To Every Decision Maker, Intelligent E-Business, IWAPU, Personal Intelligence
Network, Personalized Intelligence Portal, Query Tone, Quickstrike, Rapid Application Development, Strategy.com, Telepath, Telepath Intelligence, Telepath Intelligence (and Design), The E-Business Intelligence Platform,
The Foundation For Intelligent E-Business, The Integrated Business Intelligence Platform Built For The Enterprise, The Intelligence Company, The Platform For Intelligent E-Business, The Power Of Intelligent eBusiness,
The Power Of Intelligent E-Business, The Scalable Business Intelligence Platform Built For The Internet, Industrial-Strength Business Intelligence, Office Intelligence, MicroStrategy Office, MicroStrategy Report Services,
MicroStrategy Web MMT, MicroStrategy Web Services and Pixel Perfect are all registered trademarks or trademarks of MicroStrategy Incorporated.

All other products are trademarks of their respective holders. Specifications subject to change without notice. MicroStrategy is not responsible for errors or omissions. MicroStrategy makes no warranties or commitments
concerning the availability of future products or versions that may be planned or under development.

Patent Information

One or more of the following patents may apply to the product(s) referenced herein: U.S. Patent Nos. 6,154,766, 6,173,310, 6,260,050, 6,263,051, 6,269,393, 6,279,033, 6,501,832, 6,567,796, 6,587,547, 6,606,596,
6,658,093, 6,658,432, 6,662,195, 6,671,715, 6,691,100, 6,694,316, 6,697,808, 6,704,723, 6,707,889, 6,741,980, 6,765,997, 6,768,788, 6,772,137, 6,788,768, 6,792,086, 6,798,867, 6,801,910, 6,820,073,
6,829,334, 6,836,537, 6,850,603, 6,859,798, 6,873,693, 6,885,734, 6,888,929, 6,895,084, 6,940,953, 6,964,012, 6,977,992, 6,996,568, 6,996,569, 7,003,512, 7,010,518, 7,016,480, 7,020,251, 7,039,165,
7,082,422, 7,113,993 and 7,127,403. Other patent applications are pending.
MicroStrategy vs. SAS

I. Executive Summary............................................................................................................................ 3

II. MicroStrategy – A Market Proven, Industrial-Strength Technology.............................................. 4

MicroStrategy 8 Overview..................................................................................................................... 4

Why Companies Choose MicroStrategy?.............................................................................................. 5

III. Comparison of MicroStrategy and SAS on the 13 Key BI Requirements....................................... 6

IV. Critical Questions to Ask when Evaluating MicroStrategy and SAS............................................ 10

I. Executive Summary

In the business intelligence marketplace, MicroStrategy competes vigorously with vendors such as SAS. At first
glance, both MicroStrategy 8 and SAS 9 can be used to report and analyze corporate data, providing business
insight to organizations. However, once customers implement these business intelligence (BI) solutions, they
recognize critical differences derived from the architecture and paradigms of these very different technologies.
Key architectural differences affect the variety of report types, the breadth and depth of analysis, as well as the
cost required to maintain the BI application. The architectural differences result in disparities in performance,
scalability, usability, efficiency, and reliability of the system; all of which impact user adoption and ultimately,
the success of the BI project.

Ironically, as user and business requirements have become more complex, IT budgets have come under increasing
pressure. Business intelligence applications must now be developed, deployed, and maintained with the minimum
of IT resources, while serving more users across the global organization. Clearly, the BI architecture can be either a
liability or an asset to IT departments. A technologically superior architecture will meet all the needs of the end-user,
while minimizing the amount of IT maintenance and administration. An inferior architecture will require redundant
and repetitive administration, and the constant development of one-off workarounds.

MicroStrategy technology is based on a completely relational object-oriented metadata model that insulates
the BI application from changes in the data and business environment. This centralized and reusable metadata
is self-maintaining and adapts real-time to changes in user requirements, data schemas, and business logic.
In MicroStrategy, report developers don’t need to duplicate metadata definitions across hundreds of reports
as they may do in SAS. This duplicated effort increases the cost of ownership and change management of the
BI application. With MicroStrategy, IT departments have an industrial-strength administration infrastructure on
which they can rely to maintain their BI applications with ever increasing economies of scale.

Securing corporate data is a top priority in today’s enterprise BI applications. Drug prescription records, human
resources records, cell phone call records, and financial transactions are just a few types of sensitive data. The security
requirements become even more urgent when information is distributed via extranets or when users drill from the
high-level performance reports to detailed transaction information, anywhere in the data warehouse. MicroStrategy
provides airtight security with 128-bit end-to-end encryption and cell level protection applied automatically across
all reports and all data. SAS does not provide the same level of security out of the box and relies on third party
components to offer comparable protection.

SAS has pursued a growth strategy based on independent, specialized applications which is directly correlated
to its poor level of architecture unification. Conversely, MicroStrategy has concentrated on a single product
architecture that spans reporting, ad-hoc query, analysis, proactive notification, scorecards and dashboards under
the same user interface and metadata, thus ensuring a single “version of the truth.” SAS 9 still requires many
different architectures and interfaces. In SAS 9 you will need SAS Web Report Studio for ad-hoc query or managed
reports, SAS Web OLAP Viewer for Java for advanced OLAP functionality. The business users must access the SAS
MicroStratEGY VS. SAS

Information Delivery Portal for customized dashboards or scorecards. A greater number of user interfaces means
more training for end-users, elevating the total cost of ownership of the business intelligence application.


 For over a decade, MicroStrategy customers have built thousands of mission critical BI applications with
MicroStrategy technology. With an administration-friendly architecture, robust security, a self-service zero-
footprint Web interface, and proven user and data scalability, MicroStrategy is the only business intelligence
vendor to obtain the highest technology score from the leading industry analyst firm’s Vendor Ratings.
MicroStrategy has been proven in the marketplace as unanimously confirmed by 1,679 enterprise global
customers in the most respected independent survey of real-world BI implementations, The OLAP Survey 61.
As a newcomer, SAS has surprisingly few references to enterprise wide implementations. SAS was not analyzed
in The OLAP Survey 6 because the number of customer responses was too small to be statistically significant
proving that despite marketing claims by SAS there are relatively few successful enterprise BI implementations.
MicroStrategy surpasses SAS, delivering higher business value and better technical support resulting in the
highest customer loyalty ratings across any BI vendor.

This document discusses in detail the important characteristics of the MicroStrategy 8 architecture, the key differences
between MicroStrategy 8 and SAS 9, and the critical questions that should be asked when evaluating SAS and
MicroStrategy. Conclusions are rooted in publicly available documents and not subject to individual interpretation.

II. MicroStrategy – A Market Proven, Industrial-Strength Technology

The MicroStrategy architecture is the result of 4 years of development and 5 years of subsequent refinement, driven by
the needs of the most demanding BI applications in the world. MicroStrategy is an industrial-strength BI technology,
uniquely capable of serving BI application requirements characterized by the largest scale, most sophisticated analytics,
highest report volumes, and most users. This caliber of BI technology is now being sought after by companies, not
just for their most demanding BI applications, but for the purpose of hosting all of their BI applications – standardizing
all BI onto a single, highly-functional and economical architecture and reaping significant economies of scale and
enterprise-wide consistency.

Unlike BI Suites and BI Series offered by other vendors, MicroStrategy offers the only organically grown BI architecture.
All of the MicroStrategy 8 components were expressly built to work within a unified architecture and not as separate
standalone products or acquired technologies that were subsequently joined together.

MicroStrategy 8 Overview
MicroStrategy: Best in Business Intelligence

Launched in 2005, MicroStrategy 8 offers the latest in technical innovations with over 2,000 enhancements
across the platform. One of the key differentiators of MicroStrategy 8 is its integrated BI platform, eliminating
the need for companies to use numerous distinct technologies from different vendors for reporting, analysis,
and performance monitoring. MicroStrategy 8 provides a BI platform that companies can standardize on for
all their BI needs.

With a scalable architecture and a single metadata, users can seamlessly navigate from scorecards and dashboards
to reports and analysis without being required to open and close multiple BI tools and navigate dissimilar interfaces.

1
The OLAP Survey 6- Author: Nigel Pendse http://www.survey.com/olap/


MicroStrategy 8’s newly designed Web interface is specifically tailored for the business user. The user interface
includes an array of “one-click” actions with familiar paradigms to make business users more productive. For the first
time, users can format reports and dashboards in WYSIWYG (what-you-see-is-what-you-get) mode and leverage the
formatting skills they already have to radically reduce the time it takes to develop and deploy new reports.

Why Companies Choose MicroStrategy?

1. Integrated architecture: The MicroStrategy product set is built from a single architectural foundation,
delivering all 5 Styles of BI: Scorecards and Dashboards; Reporting; OLAP; Advanced Analysis; Alerts and
Proactive Notification.

2. Full featured Web interface: MicroStrategy’s Web interface delivers a Windows-like feeling with drag-and-
drop interactivity from any Web browser. The advanced Web architecture is “zero-footprint,” using no Java
or Active X controls, and delivers a rich reporting experience both inside and outside the firewall.

3. Seamless integration of reporting, analysis, and monitoring: MicroStrategy can embed OLAP features
directly into enterprise reports like scorecards and dashboards, providing a seamless user experience that
uncovers root causes without the need for programming or switching interfaces.

4. Ease of use and self service: MicroStrategy’s unique WYSIWYG report design and editing allows
MicroStrategy end-users to easily design and refine reports over the Web using familiar skills similar to
Microsoft® PowerPoint or Excel.

5. High performance scaling to thousands of users: Unlike other BI providers, MicroStrategy software
expands with the application to efficiently scale from hundreds to thousands of people.

6. Proven data scalability: For the past five years, The OLAP Surveys have ranked MicroStrategy highest in
data scalability. With terabyte-size databases commonplace, MicroStrategy’s field-proven technology enables
customers to deploy more BI applications with greater analytic sophistication and user functionality.

7. Automated report maintainability: Dynamic metadata architecture ensures that changes ripple throughout
all reports automatically.

8. Pervasive security and user administration: Security is automatically applied to all users, reports, and data
through role-based user administration.

9. Engineered on a single code base: MicroStrategy is widely recognized for its meticulously engineered
software based on a single code base, scaling to organizations and applications of all sizes; leveraging any
hardware, operating system, and data source infrastructure while making BI more approachable for the
average business user.
MicroStratEGY VS. SAS


 III. Comparison of MicroStrategy and SAS on the 13 Key
BI Requirements
Business intelligence has the power to provide performance feedback and visibility to all people in an organization,
enabling businesses to make thousands of better decisions every day. However, not all BI technologies deliver on this
promise, falling short on a number of key requirements demanded of enterprise BI applications. The following table
outlines the 13 overarching and important criteria by which all modern BI technologies need to be assessed, and
provides a side-by-side evaluation of MicroStrategy 8 and SAS 9 along these requirements.
MicroStrategy 8 Key Competitive Differentiators
KEY BI REQUIREMENT
Unified BI Architecture
• Seamless integration of
analytics and reporting for
root cause analysis
• Single code base across
platforms
• Single Web interface
• Single metadata
Market Proven Enterprise
Scalability and Performance
• 64-bit business intelligence
processing
• Minimal re-query of the
MicroStrategy: Best in Business Intelligence
database
• Multi-layer caching
technology
• Large user and data scale
customer references
• Aggregate awareness
• Multi-pass SQL
• Leveraging the right platform
for the right processing
• Minimal network traffic
MICROSTRATEGY 8
YES
MicroStrategy’s unified architecture provides
a seamless integration of analytics and
reporting from a single web interface.
MicroStrategy is a single code base product
that is truly platform independent. A single
shared metadata consisting of all reports
and underlying reporting objects ensures
one version of the truth. A unified web
interface means a common reporting and
analysis paradigm for all users.
YES
The MicroStrategy platform is designed for
enterprise scalability. MicroStrategy’s ROLAP
and multi-pass SQL approach leverages
the latest innovations from database
technology. It efficiently processes large
volumes of transaction level data in the
database, minimizing network traffic.
Data is cached at multiple levels to reduce
redundant computations and network
traffic. MicroStrategy’s SQL engine
aggregate awareness can dynamically
determine the most efficient table in
every analysis. 64-bit processing allows
MicroStrategy to support greater numbers
of users and data sizes while improving
performance.

SAS 9
LIMITED
SAS claims a single metadata architecture.
The SAS Metadata Server works as a single
access point to the various applications but
in reality there are three types of metadata
repositories residing on this server. Not all of
SAS products fully support the three types
of repositories. This makes the product’s
configuration and object administration
difficult to perform.
SAS 9 architecture is loosely unified,
relying on up to four different servers with
different configuration requirements. This
results in increased setup requirements and
maintenance costs.
SAS 9 has four different web interfaces that
overlap in functionality, forcing users to
switch interfaces for the desired reporting
style. This reduces the user adoption rate
and increases the total cost of ownership
of the BI solution.
NO
SAS 9 has few references to enterprise wide
BI implementations; including deployments
with data and user scale.
SAS 9 caching capability is limited. With
limited support for on disk caching, the SAS
OLAP Server is limited to using the system’s
virtual memory. There is limited caching for
relational database queries or multilayer
caching, increasing the number of database
queries and reducing performance.
SAS’ relational access capability does not
fully support multi-pass SQL or features that
optimize database performance such as
automatic aggregate awareness.
 KEY BI REQUIREMENT
Reusable and Rich
Metadata Layer
• Robust abstraction layer
(where all physical constructs
can be modeled logically and
hidden from business users)
• Highly reusable metadata
• Automatic change
management
• Object oriented metadata
Interactive WYSIWYG
Web Interface
• Fully interactive reporting,
completely zero-footprint
over the web from any
browser report development time.
• WYSIWYG document design
and editing over the Web
• Self-service
• Easy to learn, familiar
windows on the Web
paradigm
Industrial Strength
Multi-level Security
• 128-bit encryption - extranet
ready
• Integrate with any security
infrastructure with single
sign-on
• Same report yields different
views of the information
based on user profiles
• Truly zero footprint. No use
or download of ActiveX and
other plug-ins
• Cell level security
MICROSTRATEGY 8
YES
MicroStrategy’s object-oriented metadata
defines your enterprise’s business layer
in a single repository. The objects can be
nested as building blocks to create more
complex objects, e.g., Profit (revenue,
cost). If an object changes, every other
object dependent on it automatically
changes. This ensures consistency across
business definitions and minimizes the
number of objects to maintain.
MicroStrategy stores objects and
dynamically builds the report SQL during
run-time. It does not store a finished
report as a static SQL statement.
YES
Business users create highly formatted
reports using any reporting object via a
zero-footprint WYSIWYG design and run-
time editor that drastically shortens the
End-users have a high degree of
interactivity and are able to create,
manipulate and format information
through a single Web user interface.
Changes are available right away without
any need to “publish” or “export”
information to other environments.
MicroStrategy does not rely on ActiveX.
Report designers can use any browser.
YES
MicroStrategy provides centralized security
administration across reporting, analysis
and delivery. User profiles and privileges
ensure users only access the appropriate
information and functionality. Security
filters provide the right data access down
to the cell level.
MicroStrategy supports 128-bit end-to-
end encryption with a zero-footprint Web
client making it a secure platform behind
the firewall. MicroStrategy integrates with
existing security authentication infrastructure
such as LDAP, NT, and databases.

SAS 9
NO
The SAS 9 Metadata is not fully object-
oriented. Administrators who create
measures, hierarchies or dimensions cannot
fully reuse these objects to build others.
This results in reduced scalability and
increased maintenance, making enterprise
deployments difficult.
SAS Web Report Studio report objects are
usually created for each report. If a common
report object needs to be redefined, then
designers usually must manually modify
each report one-by-one in order to apply
the change.
If a user moves, renames or deletes a SAS
Information Map. This may result in an
inconsistent metadata repository and non-
functional reports.
NO
In SAS Web Report Studio, the user interaction
is basic and limited. Users cannot fully create
derived metrics, format column headings,
control alignment, expand column widths,
set the font, undo actions or drag and drop
attributes into report templates.
The design of the reports is of low boardroom
quality. The reports are based on pre-defined
templates that specify how tables and charts
are positioned. There is limited WYSIWYG
design capability and the objects cannot be
fully sized at the pixel level.
SAS Web Report Studio does not fully support
all the versions of internet browsers, limiting
SAS’ ability to be deployed in extranet
environments. Internet Explorer browser
support means SAS is vulnerable to ActiveX
security threats.
LIMITED
SAS 9 does not fully support 128-bit
encryption out of the box. To protect the
integrity of the data, an extra license of SAS/
SECURE is required. This application must be
installed on each SAS-server host, Web-server
host, and the client machines, increasing
maintenance and TCO.
SAS’ security configuration is not fully
centralized and requires heavy user
authentication between the OS where the SAS
products reside and SAS security. This increases
the administration overhead.
MicroStratEGY VS. SAS
 KEY BI REQUIREMENT
Dynamic Report
Personalization
• Comprehensive parameter
and question prompting
• Security profiles personalize
report content for individual
users
• Report bursting
Centralized Enterprise
Administration
• Self-tuning scalable server
for maximum performance
• Usage monitoring / auditing
• Controlled environment
for analysis
• Object management /
migration
• Single management
console
Flexible and Powerful
OLAP Analysis
• Integrated predictive analytics
and forecasting with best-of-
breed data mining tools
• PMML Integration
• Collaborative processing
(between analytical
engine and RDBMS-based
processing)
• Built-in financial and statistical
functions
• Business question complexity
supported by multi-pass SQL
capability
• Drill anywhere fosters
investigative analysis
• Set analysis
MicroStrategy: Best in Business Intelligence
Seamless Microsoft Office
Integration
• All Office products supported
(Excel, PowerPoint, Word,
Outlook) Outlook users. MicroStrategy Office
• Leverage all BI reports and
reporting objects security and administration, ensuring 100%
• Full new report creation
• Persistent and
interchangeable formatting
across Office and Web
MICROSTRATEGY 8
YES
In MicroStrategy, a single report can
span hundreds of possibilities tailoring
to different user needs. Advanced report
parameters, like object and hierarchy
prompts, allow users to pick the business
attributes and KPIs to include in the
report.
A single report definition for IT to maintain
can burst personalized information to
hundreds of users.
YES
MicroStrategy’s centralized administration
provides a single console for real-time user
and system management.
Enterprise Manager provides hundreds
of KPIs and corresponding dashboards to
perform impact analysis, auditing and tuning
of the BI application.
Object Manager facilitates life cycle,
metadata dependencies and project
management.
YES
The MicroStrategy SQL Engine’s ability to
dynamically generate multi-pass SQL allows
users to ask complex business questions such
as market basket and set analysis, e.g., view
sales for the current year for all customers
who purchased product ‘x’ last year. Users
can drill anywhere for a boundary-free
speed-of-thought investigative analysis.
MicroStrategy’s Data Mining Services
leverages definitions from all major third-
party data mining vendors, providing
predictive analytics to thousands of users.
MicroStrategy’s Analytical Engine provides
hundreds of built-in financial, statistical,
and mathematical functions. The SQL
Engine and the Analytical Engine work
collaboratively to ensure that processing is
performed efficiently on the optimal tier.
YES
MicroStrategy delivers the complete
reporting and analysis environment to
Microsoft Excel, PowerPoint, Word, and
applications are linked to MicroStrategy
data consistency across the enterprise.
Users are able to access existing reports or
create new ones. Changes are immediately
reflected interchangeably across
MicroStrategy Office and Web interfaces.
Microsoft Office formatting changes are
preserved after automatic data updates.

SAS 9
NO
In SAS Web Report Studio, report personal-
ization is fairly basic. There is no capability to
prompt for column selection, include filters in
prompts or include prompts within prompts.
As a result report designers must create and
maintain thousands of reports for all the users
increasing the TCO of the implementation.
Unnecessary data is returned to the user
when creating reports with SAS OLAP data
sources. Filters can only be applied while
viewing the report result set, increasing server
and database overhead.
NO
SAS’ security must often be configured
in at least two places, the SAS metadata
repositories and the host operating system
where the SAS applications reside.
SAS 9 administrators and users can manually
break the metadata integrity by moving or
renaming SAS Information Maps.
Users must often authenticate multiple
times. LDAP authentication is only
supported by two out of the four main
servers, the SAS OLAP Server and the SAS
Metadata Server. The SAS Stored Processes
Server and the SAS Workspace Server must
use the host’s OS to verify user identities.
LIMITED
OLAP analysis is not fully accessible through SAS
Web Report Studio. For more advanced OLAP
analysis, users are required to switch interfaces
to the SAS Web OLAP Viewer for Java.
SAS access to relational data sources is
restricted. There are limited multi-pass SQL
or aggregate awareness capabilities. One
SAS Information Map can only handle one
dimensional schema. When multiple fact
tables are included in one Information Map
a Cartesian Join may not be prevented,
compromising data integrity and causing
double-counting of measures.
When reporting from relational data sources,
SAS reports have limited hierarchy awareness
and drill paths must be pre-defined by the
SAS Information Map designer; there is no
true drill-anywhere capability.
LIMITED
SAS offers the Microsoft Office Add-in
with limited functionality. The Office add-in
differs in functionality depending on the SAS
data source being accessed.
However SAS Add-In for Microsoft Office
is delivered with two key limitations. Users
cannot fully create new Web Report Studio
reports and cannot fully access SAS Web
Report Studio reports from the Office Add-in.
Without this data source integration, users
must recreate every Web Report Studio
report and cannot fully leverage the
previously created reports.
 KEY BI REQUIREMENT
Dynamic Enterprise
Dashboards
• Dashboards Integrated with
Industrial-Strength BI Platform
• Full power of ROLAP analysis
• Single design environment
• Infinitely Extensible
Visualization
• Advanced Visualization Flash
Libraries
• Native parallel Flash and
DHTML visualizations
• On-Dashboard interactivity
• WYSIWYG Design Paradigm
Heterogeneous Data Source
Access from a Single Web
Document
• Direct access to SAP® BW for
reporting and analysis
• Direct access to Hyperion
Essbase
• Direct access to Microsoft
Analysis Services
• Operational database
reporting with Freeform
SQL
MICROSTRATEGY 8
YES
MicroStrategy’s Dynamic Enterprise
Dashboards fully leverage the MicroStrategy
8 platform. Dashboards are created using
reports and objects from MicroStrategy’s
single metadata. Intelligence Server
provides its sophisticated processing,
security, caching and analytical capabilities.
Users design dashboards from MicroStrategy’s
single web interface using the already
familiar design paradigm. Dashboards are
created in a zero-footprint web interface,
Pixel Perfect™ and freeform layout.
Dashboard Designers create highly interactive
dashboards and can render them in DHTML,
Flash, PDF or Microsoft Office products.
YES
MicroStrategy allows a single document to
present data pulled directly from multiple
data sources.
MicroStrategy’s Freeform SQL Engine
can generate reports from data residing
in any operational database across the
organization. MicroStrategy can directly
query SAP BW InfoCubes and QueryCubes.

SAS 9
NO
SAS 9 provides dashboards through the
SAS Information Delivery Portal via coded
portlets and SAS Web Report Studio. The
SAS dashboard’s layout is restricted and has
limited interactivity.
SAS Dashboards do not fully support pixel
perfect positioning or WYISWYG design.
Users cannot edit dashboards while viewing
the information. Users must contact IT to
make small modifications in the portal.
Users must switch tabs to view different
layers of information. Dashboard layers
within the same panel are not supported
for enhanced screen real estate.
Interactivity between dashboard
components is limited and there is limited
inter-panel control.
Advanced visualizations like heat maps,
useful for the viewing of complex data, are
not supported out of the box and require
hand coding through the SAS/Graph
module.
LIMITED
SAS 9 provides support for heterogeneous
data sources, connections to SAP BW and
other ERP systems through SAS/ACCESS
interfaces.
However, SAS Web Report Studio and
the BI Server’s OLAP Viewer can only
access the SAS OLAP Server natively and
provides limited support for third-party
OLAP databases such as Microsoft Analysis
Services or Hyperion Essbase.
In SAS Web Report Studio Reporting,
joins between heterogeneous result sets
are typically not automatic. Instead,
heterogeneous joins are usually manually
pre-defined for each SAS Information
Map.
In SAS Web Report Studio users must
ask IT to create SAS Stored Procedures
and Information Maps to access multiple
data sources from a single report tab.
SAS requires multiple servers to extract
information from the various data sources.
MicroStratEGY VS. SAS
 KEY BI REQUIREMENT MICROSTRATEGY 8 SAS 9

Robust Enterprise Reporting YES NO

• Support for wide range of
report styles
• Pixel-level absolute
positioning
• In-place analysis
• Desktop publishing
formatting
• High quality printing
• Export to Excel
Information Delivery and
Proactive Notification
• Wide range of output types:
Web, print, fax, wireless
• Alerting and Thresholds
• Dashboards and Scorecards
• Corporate Portals integration
MicroStrategy’s Web Interface is designed to
maximize business user and report designer
productivity. Highly formatted documents
are built using common desktop publishing
paradigms such as rulers and pixel-level
positioning, all over a zero-footprint Web.
MicroStrategy offers comprehensive report
styles from banded reports to dashboards
and scorecards. These documents are highly
interactive providing in-place analysis, pivoting,
drilling and Excel-like formatting toolbars.
YES
Users get personalized alerts triggered
by dynamic events and time scheduled
reports, via portal, print, email, wireless or
file servers.
MicroStrategy platform leverages highly
scalable technology that slices a single
report and dynamically distributes
personalized information to the right
users. Reusing a single report across
hundreds of users saves processing
resources.
Users can easily assemble scorecards and
dashboards based on existing objects and
integrate several data sources, without the
need of an extra application or interface.
SAS 9 does not provide a product for
Enterprise Reporting. SAS is not optimized
for hierarchical or banded reporting, making
it difficult to create operational reports. SAS
does not support pixel perfect positioning.
SAS Web Report Studio is restricted to
information consumption and basic report
creation. Users are often required to switch
to SAS Web OLAP Viewer for OLAP analysis
and to SAS Information Delivery Portal for pre-
defined and highly customized Scorecards.
Exporting to Excel in SAS Web Report Studio
is limited. The charts and graphs are exported
as images or tab-delimited text, resulting in
the loss of report interactivity or formatting
added by the report designer.
NO
SAS 9 has basic delivery capabilities. There
is limited support for scalable delivery and
notification capabilities such as mid-tier slicing,
automated distribution list generation or event
based notification.
SAS 9 does not support Scorecards out of
the box. Administrators must rely on SAS
Information Delivery Portal or SAS Solutions
Services to implement a basic version of
Scorecards through portlet customization.

IV. Critical Questions to Ask when Evaluating MicroStrategy and SAS

There is a fundamental difference between the software architectures of SAS and MicroStrategy. SAS, which stands
for “Statistical Analysis System,” has focused on delivering complex statistical and niche analytical applications
for small groups within organizations. SAS did not release a business intelligence offering marketed to larger user
MicroStrategy: Best in Business Intelligence

communities until SAS 9 was introduced in March 2005. SAS 9, also known as SAS Enterprise BI Server, is composed
of multiple tools with non-unified architectures and distinct interfaces that overlap in functionality. Underlying
reporting objects; such as calculations or filters, are not easily shared or reused across the various products. This
translates into multiple user interfaces requiring excessive user training and unnecessary re-creation of report
definitions, increasing the effort on maintaining the BI system.

In comparison, MicroStrategy’s code base was completely rewritten over the course of 4 years as a unified server-
centric architecture. MicroStrategy has been building its platform organically and keeping the utmost integrity and
efficiency. This basic difference allows MicroStrategy customers to benefit from:

10
• A greater range of functionality through a single Web interface and unified architecture which decreases training
and maintenance costs.
• A productive WYSIWYG edit environment which can be used across any Web browser.
• A market proven user and data scalability with more efficient use of network and server resources.
• Greater analytical breadth, including predictive analytics.
• A market tested and bullet-proof security infrastructure.
• Lower total cost of ownership by lowering IS support and maintenance requirements.

The following questions elicit these basic MicroStrategy strengths with some very specific comparisons that should be
made when evaluating MicroStrategy and SAS.

1. MicroStrategy 8 Intelligence Server supports a wide range of reporting styles of BI as well as common
services of metadata management from a single unified architecture. Can SAS Enterprise BI Server
deliver similar functionality through its server?

Despite the marketing claims that SAS provides an integrated architecture, SAS Enterprise BI Server is a suite
of independent products and SAS Foundation Servers each providing overlapping functionality. In order to
support the 5 styles of business intelligence, the SAS 9 architecture requires four independent servers. These
servers are: SAS Metadata Server, SAS Workspace Server, SAS Stored Process Server and the SAS OLAP Server.
These servers require independent configuration, setup, maintenance, security settings and tuning, increasing
the administration overhead and total cost of ownership. Despite having four servers, SAS does not offer an
Enterprise Reporting product.

The SAS Metadata Server is marketed as a single metadata architecture, but in reality it is used as a single access
point for the various types of metadata repositories. The different client applications still need to be configured to
one of the various different types of repositories. Not all client applications support the three types of repositories,
making environment design and configuration difficult. Users are required to know exactly where the information
they need to access is stored. Each of the three different types of repositories have specific characteristics,
capabilities and restrictions. The definitions for SAS Information Maps or SAS Reports are saved as XML files in the
metadata and when changes are made to the underlying objects, changes are not automatically updated. Users or
administrators can manually corrupt a metadata repository by changing a name or moving an object from a folder.

To gain access to relational databases administrators require a SAS/ACCESS engine. This engine often requires
manual mapping and has restricted capabilities such as no multi-pass SQL or aggregate awareness capabilities.
Drill paths must be pre-defined by the IT Administrator in the SAS Information Maps, increasing the report
design time and interaction between the IT designer and the business user.

MicroStrategy Intelligence Server, the heart of the MicroStrategy architecture provides all common services
including metadata management, prompt generation, scheduling, shared caching, security, user management,
query generation, query governing, and administration. More importantly, it is the core engine which supports
each of the 5 Styles of BI as plug-and-play “service modules” that can be mixed and matched in any combination.
MicroStratEGY VS. SAS

As the central contact point to the metadata, Intelligence Server dynamically assembles the metadata objects
to create optimized, multi-pass SQL queries for every major relational database. Intelligence Server retrieves the

11
 data, performs any additional analytical calculations not available in the databases, formats the report, and delivers
the reports to business users via MicroStrategy Web, MicroStrategy Office, Desktop, or Narrowcast Server.

Intelligence Server is a highly scalable, parallel-processing, self-tuning analytic server. Intelligence Server manages high
performance interactions accessing terabytes of data by tens of thousands of users using caching, load balancing,
resource prioritization, and connection pooling. It accesses and joins data from multiple data sources, such as data
warehouses, operational databases, multi-dimensional (cube) databases, and even flat files. Intelligence Server also
manages users, system security, data security, and user functionality access. A clustering option is available with
Intelligence Server that increases scalability, and provides fault tolerance with automatic failover.

2. MicroStrategy provides all the major styles of BI – Scorecards and Dashboards, Enterprise Reporting, OLAP
Analysis, Predictive Analysis and Alerts and Notification from a single unified web interface. Why does
SAS require three web-based products to deploy a limited subset of this same BI functionality?

MicroStrategy Web provides Dynamic Enterprise Dashboards through a powerful and business user-friendly
interface. MicroStrategy’s Dynamic Enterprise Dashboards fully leverage the MicroStrategy 8 platform. Dashboards
are created using reports and objects from MicroStrategy’s single metadata. Intelligence Server provides its
sophisticated processing, security, caching and analytical capabilities. Dashboard designers create highly interactive
dashboards and can render them in DHTML, Flash, PDF or Microsoft Office products. Users design dashboards from
MicroStrategy’s single web interface using the already familiar design paradigm. Dashboards are created in a zero-
footprint web interface, Pixel Perfect and freeform layout.

MicroStrategy’s Web architecture provides a single, consistent interface to all users whether the BI application is
departmental and internal, or an extranet application deployed to hundreds of thousands of users. MicroStrategy
Web allows users to move fluidly between all styles of BI to satisfy all reporting, analysis, and monitoring needs.

MicroStrategy Web generates an interactive BI experience including report viewing, formatting, exporting, pivoting,
sorting, drilling, and ad-hoc querying to WYSIWYG report design and creation from a single Web interface.

MicroStrategy Web accomplishes all of its functionality through a cookie-less, zero-footprint Web client without
using ActiveX® or Java Applets resident in or downloaded to the Web browser.

MicroStrategy Web provides the Web interface using Active Server Pages (ASP) on 32-bit processor computers
running Microsoft Internet Information Service (IIS) on the Microsoft Windows® operating system. In contrast to
MicroStrategy Web, MicroStrategy Web Universal provides the identical end-user functionality through ASP or Java
Server Pages (JSP) on either 32-bit or 64-bit processor computers running any supported application servers on any
MicroStrategy: Best in Business Intelligence

operating system.

Despite SAS’ efforts to market their product as a single and unified architecture capable of delivering all styles of
BI, users are often required to switch from product to product to satisfy their reporting needs for ad-hoc querying,
OLAP reporting or analysis. Regardless of the many user interfaces, SAS does not have a product for Enterprise
Reporting. SAS Web Report Studio is a fairly basic web interface that is not available for the .NET environment and
only supports the Internet Explorer web browser. Web Report Studio is mostly used for information consumers
with little report interaction. Ad-hoc query or Reporting is restricted to the SAS Information Map Data Sources,

12
 previously defined by the system administrator, SAS Stored Processes or SAS Base code. OLAP analysis is restricted
in Web Report Studio forcing users to switch to SAS Web OLAP Viewer for more OLAP functionality. Scorecard
creation is not an out of the box functionality and requires portlet customizations to the SAS Information Delivery
Portal or SAS Solutions Services to implement a basic version of Scorecards. True dashboard functionality is not
available throughout the whole suite. For more in-depth analysis like statistical analysis or forecasting, users are
required to use the SAS Enterprise Guide for the creation of SAS Stored Processes.

This tool fragmentation affects the user adoption of technology, requiring business users to learn multiple interface
and reporting paradigms. A loosely integrated architecture requires more environments to maintain increasing
overall administration complexity.

3. MicroStrategy 8 utilizes a multi-level caching architecture. MicroStrategy achieves high inter-user and
inter-report caching rates that allow maximum utilization of the IT resources, resulting in the lowest cost
per report. Does SAS 9 provide a similar enterprise caching architecture?

MicroStrategy 8 provides a comprehensive caching architecture that has been built and improved during the
years. With the MicroStrategy platform, caching is synchronized across clustered machines. All users can access
the portion of the cache for which they have permissions. Permissions are determined after applying security
filters, privileges and access control lists. With MicroStrategy, the cache is automatically refreshed whenever
any underlying report object or data changes. This is critical in maintaining a “single version of the truth.”
MicroStrategy’s multi-level caching architecture offers the following caching levels for maximum reusability:

• Report dataset caching allows quick access to full and intermediate result sets, enabling inter-user and
inter-report caching.
• Metadata object caching allows the reuse of attributes, metrics, hierarchies and other report objects. This
greatly improves the response time during report creation and manipulation.
• Lookup table element caching provides great reusability for prompt values. For example, a hierarchically sorted
list of a thousand product categories or SKU items can be cached, eliminating expensive queries to the database.
•X
 ML definition caching delivers different report presentations from the same XML cache without the need of
querying the database again. The XML cache is also used for incrementally fetching data on-demand through
the report pages or for increasing the performance of system-to-system data transmission via web services.
• Intelligent cubes enable quick user manipulations such as slicing and dicing, pivoting, subtotaling, banding,
sorting, drilling and adding new derived metrics. This enhances the usability of the system and speeds up the
investigative process.

MicroStrategy 8 uses one or more datasets as data sources for the documents. These datasets are cached
immediately when they are first used. As a result, any other report that uses the same dataset immediately
benefits from this cache. Performance and throughput are improved significantly for subsequent reports.
MicroStrategy 8 prompted reports can display hundreds of options, e.g., SKU item pick list, where this list can
be cached for future use in any similar prompted report.
MicroStratEGY VS. SAS

The SAS Enterprise BI Server suite has four different servers to process requests against the database. Out of the
four servers, the SAS OLAP Server is the only server that fully provides limited caching capabilities.

13
 SAS 9 Workspace Server does not fully provide caching functionality to allow true inter-user and inter-report
caching. Users cannot reuse the same report results requested by a previous user. When SAS Web Report Studio
users run reports through the SAS Workspace Server the query is run against the database and all the results are
brought back to the user with no mid-tier processing. This means SAS 9 will have to generate and re-run the
same SQL every time, putting a tremendous strain on the database, network and client resources.

In Web Report Studio there is no full support for prompt elements search. Every time a user runs a report
with a prompt, this user has to pick his choice from a list of elements. This may become a very painful task
when having to select from hundreds of options, taking into consideration that in SAS 9 there is no search
functionality for the element prompt lists.

The SAS Metadata Server does not fully support caching either, this means that every time a user requires a SAS
Information Map, a Report Definition or a Stored Process Definition, the SAS Metadata Server will query the
metadata repositories for this information.

The SAS OLAP Server has a limit on the size of the aggregate data sets. The size of the data cache memory
should be no more than 10% of the system’s virtual memory. The SAS OLAP Server only caches the most
frequently used cube aggregations in memory. This means that the actual reports from users are not cached.
When a user makes a request, the OLAP Server will have to process the information from the aggregated tables
and send it to the user. This results in increased processing overhead for the server host requiring more powerful
and costly infrastructure.

4. MicroStrategy supports aggregate tables which optimize the performance of the OLAP and Reporting
application. MicroStrategy’s engine is “aggregate aware” so it selects the most efficient table to
retrieve the data. Is SAS 9 “aggregate aware?”

MicroStrategy supports a wide variety of data schemas, from the common star schema to sophisticated
snowflake with split-fact schemas. Using these schemas, the data is modeled following an object-oriented
paradigm where, e.g., “Region” is an object or attribute that defines a geographical characteristic of the data.
In this case “Region,” regardless of the number of instances it is found across the tables in the data warehouse,
will be recognized by the MicroStrategy’s SQL engine as the same object. This logical abstraction layer provides
MicroStrategy with many reusability and optimization capabilities. Factual “Regional” data could exist across
several tables with different levels of aggregation, e.g., ‘daily sales’ fact table or ‘monthly sales’ fact table. If the
user runs a 2005 sales report broken by “Region,” the MicroStrategy engine will select the most efficient table.
In this case it will select the ‘Sales per month’ table as it provides the highest level of aggregation and the least
MicroStrategy: Best in Business Intelligence

effort to aggregate the yearly requested data.

SAS 9 requires a SAS/ACCESS engine to connect to relational databases. This engine often requires manual
mapping to the relational tables and columns to create a SAS data source. Administrators then connect to the
SAS data sources through SAS Information Map Studio to create data models and “Data Items.” These Data
Items are business representations of the actual data. These business representations are one-to-one mappings
of the data warehouse table and table columns structures. Reports are then created by selecting these individual
“Data Items.” Since data modelers must specify to what specific table or column the “Data Item” must map, it

14
 constrains the “SAS Query Services” engine from pointing to many tables. This critical limitation in SAS 9 causes
a lack of aggregate awareness, meaning SAS does not always access the optimum data table. SAS Information
Maps have other critical limitations that restrict the analysis that can be performed with relational databases
like no support of many-to-many relationships, no support for star schemas, no support for multiple join
paths between two tables and no support for more than one fact table per Information Map without causing
Cartesian joins.

All these critical limitations in SAS 9 cause restrictions in the analysis complexity and limit the performance,
maintainability and scalability of the Business Intelligence applications.

5. MicroStrategy reporting objects are all object-oriented. Report objects can be used as building blocks
for other objects, so the same report component can be used by multiple reports, reducing redundant
work. Do SAS reports automatically inherit changes, such as new names, metric formulas and filter
criteria, from other metadata objects?

MicroStrategy Report components are dynamic, reusable metadata objects built with the data abstraction objects,
business abstraction objects, and other report components. These three layers of metadata objects are combined
to create new reports and analyses in both MicroStrategy Desktop and MicroStrategy Web. In all cases, the
metadata objects retain their reusable and dynamic characteristics, and a change to a single object in the metadata
is automatically reflected in all other dependent metadata objects. For example, if the “Region” attribute changes
from mapping to Table A to Table B, all reports that use the attribute “Region” will seamlessly inherit the new
change. MicroStrategy’s object-oriented metadata lowers development time by reducing redundant work, and
reduces maintenance work by minimizing the number of objects that need to be maintained.

SAS Web Report Studio stores the definitions of the reports as an XML file in one of the metadata repositories.
All the components of a report are saved as parameters within this XML file and not as reusable objects. Many
report components cannot be reused across reports and cannot be reused to build other reports. When changes
are made to one report definition, changes are not automatically propagated across the other reports that use
the same object. For example, if a user wants to change the filtering criteria for “Year,” the user must find
and go into each of the reports that contain this filter and make the change manually. XML report definitions
also store the information about Information Maps connectivity. If an administrator moves or renames the
Information Map, this may result in a corrupted metadata and unusable reports.

6. MicroStrategy’s ROLAP architecture allows it to scale to tens or hundreds of terabytes of information.

Can SAS scale to handle similar data volumes?

MicroStrategy’s ROLAP architecture is not constrained by data volume. The MicroStrategy Intelligence Server is
a true application server with aggregate awareness and multi-pass SQL capabilities. MicroStrategy’s intelligent
shared caches minimize the load on the network and the database, ensuring tens of thousands of Web users
can access tens or hundreds of terabytes of information. Data does not need to be replicated out of the
database. In MicroStrategy, calculations are performed on the optimal platform, either in the database using
MicroStratEGY VS. SAS

MicroStrategy’s optimized SQL or in collaboration with a mid-tier analytical OLAP engine. Since the database’s
analytical capability is fully leveraged and only result sets are passed across the network, there are no data
volume limits when performing analysis.

15
 In general, cubes are inherently limited in data scalability and are prone to database explosion due to the
extensive amount of pre-calculation required. SAS Data Cubes are constrained and are limited in the number
of dimensions, the number of levels and the levels per hierarchy per cube. At a maximum, SAS recommends no
more than 7 hierarchies and 7 levels per hierarchy to guarantee appropriate server processing costs and to avoid
database explosion.

SAS Web Report Studio performs limited calculations in the middle tier server, returning the results of data from
the database to the client’s desktop for client side processing. The performance for running a report may be
determined by the amount of information that is transferred through the network and hardware capabilities of
the desktop machines. This inefficient transfer of data results in an inordinate strain on network, middleware
and client resources especially as the number of users increase.

7. MicroStrategy offers a WYSIWYG web environment of report formatting and analysis that increases
productivity of business users and speeds up design. Does SAS Web Report Studio allow web users to
format and interact with data without switching to a “wizard” or “design” mode?

SAS Web Report Studio is the new reporting interface from SAS. In this product, SAS users can design reports
by using predefined templates or starting from scratch. SAS users are constrained to a portal design style,
where they can only add individual report attributes and metrics to create tables or graphs, with the option
of adding text around the report but without free form layout flexibility. SAS does not provide a WYSIWYG
environment for users to create reports with pixel level placement. The user interaction is basic. Users have
limited capabilities to create complex derived metrics, format column headings, control alignment, expand
column widths, set the font, undo actions or drag and drop attributes into report templates. IT Administrators
are required to make even minor report modifications, normally involving programming changes. To include
ad-hoc analysis capabilities it requires users to change to the SAS Enterprise Guide desktop interface or to the
SAS Web OLAP Viewer web interface. If Dashboards are required, users must use the SAS Information Delivery
Portal. These dashboards are pre-customized portal version based on portlets. All this increases the costs for
user training and deployment of BI applications.

With MicroStrategy, end-users are able to author a wide variety of report types. From operational to scorecard
and dashboard reports, users have pixel level control to create zone-based reports or perform modifications
to existing ones. MicroStrategy users can also interact with the data on the report without having to learn
multiple products or interfaces. A functional and intuitive unified web environment is important to make
end users truly self-sufficient. After users obtain the first access to reports, they will want to interact with
them. If end users have to turn back to IT departments for simple modifications such as changing the font or
MicroStrategy: Best in Business Intelligence

alignment of the title, then both IT departments and end users become less productive, adoption rates drop
and, with that, the ROI of the BI application.

8. How flexible is the reporting and analysis environment? What degree of ad-hoc reporting and analysis
is available? Can an end user drill from any attribute to underlying lower level detail? Or is it restricted
only to drill paths that have been created and defined manually by an administrator?

In SAS, most meaningful calculations and all drill through and navigation must be pre-determined using a
client-server tool called SAS OLAP Cube Studio. Limited user interaction includes fixed and basic parameter

16
 driven reports but no true ad-hoc report creation for users. Very little analytical or functional capability is
available unless fully built into the cube ahead of time. SAS is not an ad-hoc reporting environment given its
drilling limitations, the need to pre-build all analysis, and the amount of time required to build cubes.

The SAS environment has two separate MOLAP and relational environments that must be manually bridged
together to the extent possible. SAS OLAP Cube Studio, which is cube-based, is required for interactive OLAP
style analysis. Users need an additional product, SAS Web OLAP Viewer, to perform analysis over the Web.
SAS Web Report Studio is required for reporting. These are two separate tools each working off a separate
data store and encouraging two different versions of the truth.

MicroStrategy Intelligent Cubes have been fully integrated into MicroStrategy’s scalable ROLAP architecture.
Analysis can be performed within the Intelligent Cubes but are not constrained to the cube’s boundaries. The
MicroStrategy engine seamlessly updates the Intelligent Cubes with data from relational data sources. Out of
the box, users have the ability to drill anywhere to various levels of detail either within or seamlessly beyond
MicroStrategy Intelligent Cubes. No administration is necessary to maintain these drill paths.

MicroStrategy end-users could drill from ‘Region’ to ‘Territory’ to ‘Product’ a drill from parent to child
attribute and then to a completely different hierarchy. If a new attribute is added to a hierarchy, no database
administration is necessary to make this attribute accessible for drilling. Also, as users are added into the
system, security profiles ensure that users obtain the right level of access when navigating across the different
hierarchies of information.

9. How much IT administration and system setup is required? Can SAS manage thousand user
deployments? Can SAS Web Report Studio run in every browser?

SAS cubes usually require significant time and resources to set up. Setup tasks are numerous, including building
and optimizing cubes, creating scripts for calculations, and maintaining the OLAP interface using SAS OLAP
Cube Studio. Creating SAS cubes is equivalent to building another duplicate proprietary database on top of the
data warehouse.

SAS does not provide an administration console where IT can conduct tuning of the different reports run by users.
SAS is frequently deployed to small user populations within organizations and therefore lacks the experience in
handling and administering enterprise wide deployments to thousands of users. SAS Web interfaces only work in
the Internet Explorer web browser as they depend on ActiveX and WebDAV technologies, which have been known
for exposing security holes in the past.

MicroStrategy Administrator is a comprehensive environment for developing, deploying and maintaining

multiple applications across multiple platforms. A remote administration console enables complete control over
system monitoring tasks and administration of users and objects. Object Manager facilitates complete life-cycle
application management. Reporting objects can be migrated easily across development, test and production
environments and can be shared between users, groups, and projects. Complete user and data warehouse
MicroStratEGY VS. SAS

monitoring ensures maximum performance and throughput.

Report and cube creation using MicroStrategy software is a simple, quick task. MicroStrategy end-users use a
WYSIWYG drag and drop paradigm to create Web reports or MicroStrategy Intelligent Cubes — the process

17
 is identical regardless of complexity of the cube or report. MicroStrategy object prompts and dynamic time
transformations fulfill the needs of the user population with far less number of reports, decreasing maintenance
costs and increasing service levels in the organization. The MicroStrategy Web interface runs in any kind of
browser and does not use ActiveX.

10. MicroStrategy Web gives users control over report content. Prompts enable personalization of reports
from a single report definition, reducing the number of objects stored in the metadata repository.
Does SAS Web Report Studio support such advanced prompting capabilities?

SAS Web Report Studio prompting capabilities are very basic. Users cannot select via prompts the attributes or metrics
that will define their reports. The elements from a prompt cannot be dynamically generated by a filter but must be
previously defined by an administrator within the Information Map. This requires the users to go through a series of
iterations before getting the desired final report layout. When accessing relational databases through SAS Web Report
Studio, there is no hierarchy awareness. When accessing the SAS OLAP Cubes there is no way to prompt the users
to filter the data while building the initial report. All the results are brought back to the user without any middle
tier processing. This increases network traffic and generates overhead on the client side. When an administrator
selects the particular prompt picklist values there is no way to customize by sort order. Users are not able to filter
or search on the picklist, having to select from hundreds of possible values. Prompts cannot be optional, meaning
that if a report designer includes a prompt in a report, the user will have no choice other than to answer it. Finally, the
prompt interface does not support radio buttons, check boxes or calendar displays for date type filters.

This lack of prompt functionality in SAS encourages the creation of unnecessary reports and increases
workarounds in the database and programming requirements. This elevates the administration and maintenance
costs of the business intelligence application.

The MicroStrategy BI platform contains a sophisticated prompting engine that allows the selection of filtering
criteria using attributes, such as a time period or a geographical attribute, and metrics, such as top 10% or
bottom 10 by revenue. Report content becomes completely dynamic with object prompts. Users can choose the
specific attributes and metrics from a list that is available on a report. This results in controlled, guided ad-hoc
analysis that can be deployed to all end-users.

MicroStrategy supports more types of user prompts than any other BI platform. User prompts allow the users
to input or make selections at runtime to alter the contents of the report. Simple prompts may allow users to
pick from a list of years to filter down time criteria for a report; more sophisticated prompts may allow users to
select the level of a hierarchy and the metrics they would like to see on the report. MicroStrategy supports the
MicroStrategy: Best in Business Intelligence

following comprehensive set of prompts.

• Hierarchy Prompts allow users to choose elements from a tree-shaped hierarchy

• List Prompts include Shopping carts, Radio Buttons, Check Boxes, Multi-select Boxes formats
• Object Prompts allow users to choose which objects to place on a report at runtime
• Value Prompts allow users to specify values or thresholds for specific reports
• Level Prompts allow users to choose dimensionality for the metrics on a report

With MicroStrategy, business users have the ability to specify what content should be included in a report each
time they run the report by answering prompts. A single MicroStrategy report design can produce hundreds of
report variations through MicroStrategy’s unique parameterized reporting capability.

18
COLL-0709 0407 MicroStrategy Incorporated • 1861 International Drive McLean, VA 22102 • 703.848.8600 • www.microstrategy.com