Benefiting from Centralized Database Access Control

All database connectivity is handled by Intelligence Server, which provides centralized control of database access. The advantages of centralized control include:

• Connectionless client—All connections to databases in the system are made through Intelligence Server. This means that only the Intelligence Server machine needs to have database connectivity. It also eliminates the need to rely on identically configured connections on client and server computers. This makes it easy to set up, deploy, and manage large systems.
• Connection caching—Connecting to and disconnecting from databases incurs a small amount of overhead that may cause a small, yet noticeable, decrease in performance in high-concurrency systems. With connection caching, Intelligence Server is able to reuse database connections. This minimizes the overhead associated with repeated connecting to and disconnecting from databases.
• Workload governing—Because only Intelligence Server connects to databases, it can make sure that no one database becomes overloaded with user requests. This is especially important for the data warehouse.
• User connection mapping—Intelligence Server can map MicroStrategy users and user groups to data warehouse login IDs. This allows multiple users to access the database using a single database login or different database logins.
• Ease of administration/monitoring—Because all database connectivity is handled by Intelligence Server, keeping track of all connections to all databases in the system is easy.
• Prioritized access to databases—You can set access priority by user, project, estimated job cost, or any combination of these.
• Multiprocess execution—The ability to run in multiprocess mode means that if one process fails, such as a lost or hung database access thread, the others are not affected.
• Database optimizations—Using VLDB properties, Intelligence Server is able to take advantage of the unique performance optimizations that different database servers offer.