Prerequisites

To create a report that displays your organization's data, you must have a MicroStrategy project already created, and you must have the appropriate MicroStrategy privileges to perform the necessary tasks. If you plan to use the MicroStrategy Tutorial project and its sample data with the following procedures, you only need the privileges necessary to perform the procedures; it is not necessary to have your own project set up in MicroStrategy.

Each of these requirements is discussed below.

A working project with data objects

Before you create your own reports, you must have a working MicroStrategy project containing objects that reflect your business data. (If you do not yet have your own working project, you can use the Tutorial project to practice procedures in this book. The Tutorial project is discussed below.) A project must contain objects that reflect your business data, so that those objects can be placed on a report and, when the report is executed, the appropriate business data can be retrieved from your data source.

Business objects that must already be created within a project include the following:

• Facts, for example Revenue or Units Sold, are business measurements, which take the form of data stored in your data source, or variables. Facts are typically numeric and suitable for aggregation. They are used to create metrics as well as other objects in MicroStrategy.
• Attributes are business concepts that answer questions about facts, such as when, where, and so on. Attributes provide a context for reporting those facts.

Your project may already contain other objects in addition to attributes and facts, such as metrics, filters, and prompts. Facts and attributes are the minimum objects that must already be created. They are usually created by your project designer when the project itself is created.

For example, on a report that contains the Year attribute and a Units Sold metric (based on a Units Sold fact), you can view how many units were sold during a given year. Without any attribute on this report, the report can provide information only about how many units were sold overall; it cannot answer questions about who purchased the units, when, where, and so on.

Detailed information about creating projects, as well as about facts, attributes, and how to create these objects can be found in the Project Design Help.

If you do not have a working project yet, you can use the Tutorial project with the procedures in this chapter to learn how to create the various report objects in MicroStrategy. For information on the Tutorial project and how to access it, see About sample data and the MicroStrategy Tutorial project.

Report design and creation privileges

As a MicroStrategy user, you must have the appropriate privileges assigned to you, to be able to create reports and report objects, as follows:

• For MicroStrategy Web, the group of privileges assigned to most report designers is called Web Professional.
• For MicroStrategy Developer, the group of privileges assigned to most report designers is called Developer.

See your administrator for any questions about privileges assigned in MicroStrategy.