Improve Project Loading and Schema Update Performance by Optimizing Intelligent Cubes Processing for Dynamic Sourcing

Starting in MicroStrategy ONE Update 10 you can improve the performance of project loading and schema updates. To achieve this, cube processing in the MicroStrategy data engine is optimized to only process necessary cubes during project loading and schema updates.

During project loading or project schema updates, if dynamic sourcing is enabled for at least one of the projects and there are active cube caches available for the projects, the MicroStrategy data engine must process cubes with an active cube cache status for dynamic sourcing functionality to be ready to work. With an increasing number of cubes being processed and/or increasing cube complexity, more time is needed for cube processing since project loading and schema updates take longer.

The most obvious workflows where you can expect to see performance improvements:

Project loading during MicroStrategy Intelligence server startup
Project loading and reloading
Project schema updates

In MicroStrategy 2021 Update 10, the MicroStrategy data engine has been enhanced to optimize cube processing for dynamic sourcing. Instead of processing all cubes (such as Data Import (MTDI) cubes, OLAP Intelligent cubes with dynamic sourcing disabled, and OLAP Intelligent cubes with dynamic sourcing enabled) as before, the MicroStrategy data engine only processes the necessary cubes for dynamic sourcing to be ready to work. These are the OLAP Intelligent cubes with dynamic sourcing enabled

Check If Dynamic Sourcing is Enabled for a Project

This performance enhancement benefits use cases where dynamic sourcing is enabled for at least one of the projects and there are active cubes caches available for the projects. To check if dynamic sourcing is enabled for a project, follow the steps below.

Open the Workstation window.
In the Navigation pane, click Projects.
Right-click the project and choose Properties.
In the left pane, click All Settings.

How Do Different Scenarios Benefit from This Performance Enhancement?

The following table provides the project loading performance data for MicroStrategy 2021 Update 9 (without performance enhancement) and MicroStrategy 2021 Update 10 (with performance enhancement). The following test was performed on two identical MicroStrategy Tutorial projects that have Data Import (MTDI) cubes, OLAP Intelligent cubes with dynamic sourcing disabled, and OLAP Intelligent cubes with dynamic sourcing enabled.

	Project Loading Time (Seconds)	Project2 Loading Time (Seconds)
	91 cubes with active cube caches: 44 cubes with DS* enabled + 47 other cubes (MTDI or Intelligent cubes with DS* disabled)	96 cubes with active cube caches: 0 cubes with DS* enabled + 96 other cubes (MTDI or Intelligent cubes with DS* disabled)
Before Enhancement	101	169
After Enhancement	30	31
Percent of Improvement	70%	82%

The results shown above are indicative of performance improvements in this specific set of projects. You may not achieve the exact same performance improvement in other types of projects. Actual performance improvements also depend on the complexity of the project schema. In general, the more active non-dynamic-sourcing cubes you have in your project, the better the performance gain.