This presentation was given at Micro

1. Bryan Brandow
MicroStrategy Architect
Ryder System Inc.
January 27th, 2010
Improving Object Migration Management with Ease
powered by
Ryder’s Enterprise Data Warehouse

2. Ryder System, Inc. is a FORTUNE® provider of leading-edge transportation, logistics and supply
chain management solutions worldwide. Ryder's product offerings include: Fleet Management
Solutions (FMS), which provides leasing, rental and programmed maintenance of trucks,
tractors and trailers to commercial customers; Supply Chain Solutions (SCS), which manages
the movement of materials and related information from the acquisition of raw materials to the
delivery of finished products to end-users; and Dedicated Contract Carriage (DCC), which
provides a turn-key transportation service that includes vehicles, drivers, routing and
scheduling. Ryder serves customer needs throughout North America and in Latin America,
Europe and Asia.
For 75 years, Ryder has earned high marks for serving customers in a timely, cost-effective and
reliable manner. That reputation has helped Ryder to continually rank among the industry's
leading companies in many publications, including the FORTUNE® Most Admired Companies,
the InformationWeek 500 of leading business users of information technology and
InternetWeek's top 100 U.S. companies for effectiveness in using the Internet to achieve
tangible business benefits.
Ryder's stock (NYSE: R) is a component of the Dow Jones Transportation Average and the Standard & Poor's 500 Index.
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3. EDW Platform Statistics
Usage 8 – 14,000 reports run each day
Over 9 million reports generated in last 8 years
Reports > 250 templates with over 35,000 user saved reports
Users 14,000 (7,000 Internal, 7,000 External)
Applications 20 Subject Area/Applications leveraging the MicroStrategy
Suite
Database 3 database platforms
Nearly 3,000 staging, development, and production tables
Over 4.0 Terabytes of data
Awards 2008 MicroStrategy World Winner Best Practices in BI
Individual Excellence
Operations and Maintenance, Customer Fleet Care
applications considered “World Class” – Hackett Group 2007
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4. Importance of Data Governance
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5. Importance of Data Governance
• Single Version of the Truth
► Ensure unified business rules throughout the
environment.
• Reduced Support
► Standardized objects promote reusability and faster
development.
• Gatekeepers not Decision Makers
► EDW ensures a unified and consistent environment
based on Business Rules.
“How we decide how to decide”
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6. Ryder‟s Change Management Strategy
• Development occurs in a dedicated environment, and after passing Developer
Unit Testing, is promoted to a Test environment which mirrors Production.
• Business Users utilize the Test environment to approve projects and data.
Further testing from the EDW team is performed as well as a check to make
sure the migration details are in order.
• Once signed off, the application is promoted to Production.
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7. Object Manager Overview
• Object Manager provides a single graphical drag and drop interface for
migrating objects between environments such as Development, Test and
Production.
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8. Object Manager Overview
• Dependencies are determined at the time of the migration and decisions on
objects with different versions between environments must be made.
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9. Ryder’s Original Migration Process
How we got here.
What worked well.
What didn‟t work so well.
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10. Original Migration Process
• Basic documentation of migration actions
► This Excel file is passed around between developers and administrators, each appending to
the log.
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11. Original Migration Process
• Change Tickets for future tracking
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12. Original Migration Process
• Separate migrations for each folder
► Unrelated objects that were
in different folders had to be
migrated individually. This
would extremely lengthen
the amount of time required
for each migration
depending on how many
objects were involved.
► In our larger projects, the
processing of a single
migration takes 10-15
minutes. A large migration
involving several folders
could easily take an hour or
two of an administrator‟s
time, and the environment
is unavailable during this
process.
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13. Original Migration Process
• Migrations performed in 2-Tier
► Due to past experiences, all
of our migrations are
performed in 2-Tier. This
eliminates potential object
caching issues between the
active IServer and the
Metadata.
► After a 2-Tier migration is
complete and the schema is
updated, the project must
be reloaded. For
Production projects, we
reload as soon as there are
no users in the project. But
for our large projects that
have long reload times or
have constant user traffic,
we have scheduled tasks
that reload the projects at
night.
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14. Original Migration Process
• Did it work?
► We had no way of knowing if a migration was successful unless we
tested the reports manually or a user called us with an issue.
► Since we migrate in 2-Tier and reloaded the production projects at
night, it was common that we would not catch an issue until users
saw the reports the following morning. By this time, fixes that
required an additional migration would now have to wait another
day due to the project reload requirement.
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15. Original Migration Process – Goals to Improve
• Each Object location was migrated individually, lengthening the migration
process
► Find a way to consolidate objects so that migrations were more efficient.
• Logs were manual and time consuming
► Find a way to assist or automate the creation of logs for Developers.
• Results of the migration were unknown until further testing or often discovered
by the end users
► Find a way to validate migrations to ensure that they were completed correctly.
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16. New Process Ideas
• Each Object location was migrated individually, lengthening the migration
process
► Find a way to consolidate objects so that migrations were more efficient.
► Use Object Prompts to
serve as containers for
Migrations.
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17. New Process Ideas
• Logs were manual and time consuming
► Find a way to assist or automate the creation of logs for Developers.
► Query the Metadata to check the Target
project BEFORE the migrations to determine
if the Migration Package contains all of the
necessary elements
► Create the Migration Log automatically.
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18. New Process Ideas
• Results of the migration were unknown until further testing or often discovered
by the end users
► Find a way to validate migrations to ensure that they were completed correctly.
► Parse the log files and compare
the results to the Metadata to
immediately determine the
accuracy of the migration.
► Determine if the migration was
successful IMMEDIATELY and
without ambiguity.
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19. New Process Ideas
• Additional enhancements
► Automatically check the Security
of Reports and Documents that
were involved in the migration to
ensure that their security is
properly set compared to the
parent folder.
► Export results to HTML to serve
as a receipt to attach to Change
Control tickets.
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20. Demonstration
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21. Migration Packages
To expedite the migration process, developers can now create a Migration
Package by adding all of their desired objects into a single Object Prompt.
Step1: Step2: Step3:
Create Object Prompt Add all desired objects Save with your name & date in
for migration Public ObjectsMigrations
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22. Migration Package Builder
Select your
Source/Target
Projects and
Migration Package
from the drop
down lists.
The Source Projects are a list of all Dev and Int projects from our Development Project Source. The Target Projects are a list of all Int projects and
Production projects from both our Development and Production Project Sources. The Object Prompt list is a list of all Prompts (of type Object
selection) located in the Public ObjectsMigrations folder.
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23. Migration Package Builder
The tool will tell
you if there are
dependencies
missing from
your Migration
Package but
different in the
Target.
Review the list,
and modify your
Migration
Package as
needed.
The tool will scan the contents of the Migration Package and compare to a recursive list of dependencies from the metadata. Any dependencies that
are not included in the Migration Package and do not exist in the Target Project are marked as required. Dependencies that exist with a different
version ID are noted and optional to include. Checking the box and clicking Next uses the SDK to insert that object into your Object Prompt.
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24. Migration Package Builder
You will then see a
list of items in your
Migration Package
that are conflicts
with the target.
Review this list and
check the box for
any objects that
need to be marked
as Replace.
This list is comprised of objects that are included in the Migration Package but exist differently in the Target. The developer is required to check all
boxes, but this screen serves as a sign off that they acknowledge everything that they want to replace.
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25. Migration Package Builder
If there are any
additional special
handling
instructions, please
list them in the
space provided.
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26. Migration Package Builder
The final output text
should be copied
and pasted into the
Remedy ticket.
These instructions
will help expedite
the migration
process.
The tool generates an overview of the migration and a list of all of the objects for the administrator that need to be marked as replace (including a hint
at the object type). The number of new objects is noted, but since individual decisions aren‟t made on these (at least in 8), the count is FYI.
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27. Migration Process – Object Audit Tool
After the migration is complete, we will run an audit on the results of the migration against the
Migration Package. In the event of a discrepancy, we will reconcile the difference with the developer.
These could include objects that were moved that were not part of the Migration Package, or objects
that were part of the package but not moved.
The OMLog is parsed and compared to the metadata to check for errors. Checks include objects moved that weren‟t in the prompt (red), objects that
were in the prompt but didn‟t get moved (purple) objects that moved as expected (green) and the Migration Package itself (blue).
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28. Attach “Receipt” to Remedy Ticket
After the migration is verified, we will export a receipt of everything that occurred and attach this
report to the Remedy ticket. In addition to this transactional log in the ticket, the server copy will
retain all history of all migrations in a single location. The OM Tool also has built in backup
functionality so that we can periodically back up migration logs ourselves. Any logs can be
independently loaded and viewed in the OM Tool.
The receipt contains an html output of the log analysis and is attached in our Change Control system for a complete record of every operation that
occurred during the migration. Any items that “sneak” over unintended are deleted before the migration is marked as complete. Any errors are
immediately resolved.
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29. Migration Process – Object Security Audit
Once complete to production, a Security Audit will be performed to verify the
permissions set on each object. By default, they will inherit the security of the
parent folder. The Migration Team will raise a question in the event that there are
obvious errors and will reconcile to any special instructions included with the
Remedy Ticket.
This option checks the security of any Reports in the Migration and compares to their parent folder. This gives the administrator an easy view at who
has access to the reports. Differences are highlighted in Red, but the primary decisions are human based. (Note: After the above migration was
originally completed, the group “Finance – Vehicle “ did not have access to the report, so this highlighted that issue and we resolved before any
users reported not being able to see it.)
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30. Overall Benefit
Historically, Ryder averages 3 migrations per week between Dev->Int and
Int->Prod
Original Method Dev->Int Int->Prod
Developers creating Migration Logs manually 60 15
Admin average 7 migration steps (Tables, Facts,
Attributes, Metrics, Filters Prompts, Reports) 56 56 8 each
Admins redo 1/3 of migrations due to error 19 19
QA Testing required to best of our ability in 2-Tier 30 30
Total (hrs) 11 6 17
New Method Dev->Int Int->Prod
Developers create Migration Logs with MPB 1 1 15 hrs saved per week
Admin moves Migration Package 8 8 8 each
Errors are eliminated from the process 0 0
QA Testing is shorter due to higher confidence 10 10
Total (hrs) 1 1 2

31. Future Plans with 9: Automated Package Creation
Extract Change Journaling data to automatically build Migration Logs, further
reducing the time it takes for a developer to create a migration package.
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32. Future Plans with 9: Off Hours Scheduling with Update Packages
The final step of the MPB could create an Update Package that can be placed in a
monitored folder. A separate process would check this folder nightly and apply the
migrations automatically, only alerting administrators in the event of an error. This
would greatly minimize administrator involvement and effectively reduce the
administrator’s role to approvals instead of tasks. This would also allow backup
administrators to easily manage the environment with minimal technical
involvement.
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33. Future Plans with 9: Automated Integrity Manager Testing
After the migration is
complete, Integrity
Manager could be
executed to verify that
the SQL and data
match between Test
and Prod.
IM can be called from
the command line and
the output stored in
HTML and parsed for
instant off hours
alerts.
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34. Thank You
Questions?
Bryan Brandow
MicroStrategy Architect
Ryder System Inc.
bryan_brandow@ryder.com
January 27th, 2010
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35. Build Your Own Migration Package Toolset
• The following slides will map out how to build your own set of tools.
• What you’ll need
► Some basic SQL skills (joins, group by, stored procedures)
► Some basic programming skills (read the contents of a file, connect to SQL, basic Web and
application GUI)
► No MicroStrategy SDK is required for any portion of these tools as shown in this
presentation.
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36. Migration Package Builder
Select * from dssmdobjinfo where
object_type = 32
Select * From dssmdobjinfo where
object_type = 10 and subtype = 2566
and parent_id = „GUID of Migrations
Folder‟
10 = prompt
2566 = object prompt
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37. Migration Package Builder
SQL Code on next slide.
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38. SQL Code
This SQL code shows how to get the contents of an object prompt and determine
if there are missing dependencies.
Continued on next slide …
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39. SQL Code Continued
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40. Object Manager Log Tool
1. Parse the log file (OMLog.log in 8.x, Diagnostics Logging Tool for 9x).
2. Compare object results to the contents of the Migration Package (SQL Code in
previous step).
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41. Report Security
Query from
DSSMDOBJSECU table,
joining on the object id‟s
of the Reports and
Documents.
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