Interdependencies in the BI ecosystem mean that data and report integrity are susceptible to even minor changes elsewhere in the system. Companies typically monitor the integrity of their BI data through manual data validation, but often do not have sufficient resources to detect unexpected changes. MicroStrategy Integrity Manager greatly increases the accuracy of business intelligence applications by validating data and report integrity.

MicroStrategy Integrity Manager automatically compares and verifies the consistency of reports as changes are made to the BI ecosystem, and then highlights issues and discrepancies to ensure the overall reliability of the BI content used by business decision makers. This automation solves the challenges and pitfalls of manual data validation. In self-service BI systems where end users create their own reports, automated validation testing becomes increasingly important due to the large number of user-generated reports.

MicroStrategy Integrity Manager reduces the need for resource-intensive manual testing by comparing versions of reports after data updates and throughout the BI development cycle, thereby automating report regression testing. Data inconsistencies can be captured much sooner in the development cycle, saving time in report testing, end user support, and issue resolution. Companies can increase the scope, effectiveness, and accuracy of their data validation efforts, and free developers to focus on content creation rather than manual testing.

MicroStrategy Integrity Manager also supports the creation of baselines and automated test execution, and detects and logs possible inconsistencies and errors, alerting administrators to any report and data integrity issues.

Even minor changes in the BI ecosystem can impact data accuracy and lead to inconsistencies across versions of BI reports. Common types of changes that require report and data validation include:

• Software upgrades: MicroStrategy Integrity Manager ensures that database and BI software upgrades designed to address defect fixes and enhancements do not impact report integrity, and that inconsistencies are identified so they can be corrected prior to being viewed by business users.
• BI project migrations: As part of the normal BI development life cycle, developers continuously migrate entire BI projects or project objects across the development, test and production environments. Administrators need to confirm that migrated objects perform as expected and do not negatively impact existing BI reports.
• Data warehouse ETL processes: Data loads and ETL scripts can modify or even corrupt existing information within the data warehouse. Database administrators require certainty that the ETL processes are successfully completed, without altering previously loaded data and introducing inconsistencies to BI reports and content.
• Database optimizations: System tuners can alter existing database objects and report parameters, or add new objects such as indexes and aggregate tables to improve report performance and system throughput. Developers need to ensure that subtle SQL changes and database alterations made for performance do not alter query results.