MicroStrategy Developer is a client interface that was conceived while thinking of an interface that the majority of the developers and users are familiar with: Windows Explorer. Microsoft Windows Explorer is a tool that helps the user to visualize, manage, organize, create, and delete files in a PC. Similarly, MicroStrategy Developer (which by the way was called MicroStrategy Desktop for many years before version 9.5) is a tool that helps the user to visualize, manage, organize, create, and delete MicroStrategy Objects in the metadata.

Although other MicroStrategy clients, covered in Chapter 1, Architecture – Installing and Configuring MicroStrategy, will offer some specific functionality and interaction with the MicroStrategy Objects, MicroStrategy Developer is the main client to develop and manage all three object categories, as shown in the following screenshot:

Notice that the MicroStrategy Developer tree structure is similar to that of Windows Explorer. Similarly, actions such as drag and drop, copy and paste, renaming (F2), and folder creation, to name a few, follow the same paradigm as in Windows, making MicroStrategy Developer very familiar and intuitive to the developer and user. Although there are some folders already created by default by MicroStrategy, developers can create as many as they want, rename them, and move Schema and Public Objects arbitrarily within these. However, it is recommended to keep these objects separated for ease of administration and maintenance. Conversely, the configuration objects only reside within the section named Administration.