In Chapter 1, Architecture - Installing and Configuring MicroStrategy, we learned that MicroStrategy connects to its Metadata database either by configuring a 2-Tier (Direct) or a 3-Tier (Server) Project Source. However, we have not discussed yet how it connects to the source of the data. Each MicroStrategy Project can connect to one or multiple sources to which the generated SQL, resulting from Reports and Intelligent Cubes, gets executed. The following diagram depicts an example of how one Project connects to a database (for instance, a Data warehouse):

In the following sections, we will learn which MicroStrategy Objects are necessary to establish such connectivity.