Tying it All Together: Projects and Project Sources

A MicroStrategy project is an object in which you define all the schema and application objects, which together provide for a flexible reporting environment. A project's metadata repository is established by the project source in which you construct the project. The project's data warehouse is specified by associating the project with the appropriate database instance. For detailed information about projects, including instructions on how to create a project, see the Project Design Help.

You can manage your projects using the System Administration Monitor. For details, see Managing and Monitoring Projects.

A project source is a container stored in Developer that defines how Developer accesses the metadata repository. Think of a project source as a pointer to one or more projects that are stored in a metadata repository.

Two types of project sources can be created, defined by the type of connection they represent:

• Server connection, or three-tier, which specifies the Intelligence Server to connect to.

• Direct connection, or two-tier, which bypasses Intelligence Server and allows Developer to connect directly to the MicroStrategy metadata and data warehouse. Note that this is primarily for project design and testing. Because this type of connection bypasses Intelligence Server, important benefits such as caching and governing, which help protect the system from being overloaded, are not available.

  In older systems you may encounter a 6.x Project connection (also two-tier) that connects directly to a MicroStrategy version 6 project in read-only mode.

For more information on project sources, see the Installation and Configuration Help.