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Monday, June 16, 2008

Qlikview Vs Others


Hi,
I have worked on Qlikview version 7 and 8 for one year and now presently working on Oracle BIEE(Siebel Analytics) and Hyperion Essbase system 9. Have done dozens of POC and implementations and Qlikview has gained the same respect everywhere. Personally I just love this tool.

I have mentioned some of the important areas where Qlikview is lacking and you will notice that in the coming releases, Qliktech will try to touch all these areas showing some improvements.

I would like to share some pros and cons:
1. The biggest disadvantage is the amount or size of data. If you have data huge data in hundreds of GB, then qlikview may not be a good choice.Qlikview was having alimit of 2 Billion rows in a table to be loaded before the release of version 9 but now in version 9 it is not there and the size of data directly depends on system RAM. But even now I did not see a guide telling the RAM requirements for a specified amount of data and how does it increase as the amount of data size grows.
still there are some workarounds in certain cases. Design OLAP cubes or Data Marts in your database and keep the logic simple in Qlikview. Rather than creating a huge application, divide into smaller applications and use navigation. But if a single Datamart is huge, Qlikview is not for you.

2. Now speaking for small data sizes, I have observed that it is not the not the pill which cures a patient but it is the diagonosis of a doctor. Dont rapidly start making applications. They may be ready in few days but to manage them could be very difficult and time consuming. plan your needs, take some time to think on it and discuss. when plan is clear in your mind, start working on it.
3. For organisations having data growing rapidly, give a thought to create a datawarehouse with marts designed as per your needs. this will have two advantages. Your qlikview application would be simple and if tommarrow you plan to implement some other BI tool, this will be of great help.
4. few days back, I just heard about Qlikview providing alert capability. i am not sure if alerts can be sent to hand held devices and cell phones. Also check if these alerts can be designed by business users using some wizard or interface. If alerts can be created using API programming, it will really not be useful. I have seen a wizard based alerts available in Qlikview to define an event and sending the content via email.

5. Proprietary files -Another major disadvantage with all the tools storing data in their proprietary files like Qlikview, Essbase and Cognos. Tomorrow if you plan to have another tool for some reporting or if you plan to have another application talk to these cubes(Qliktech may not like to refer its files as cubes which I beleive is nothing else), then there could be a seroius problem. Major vendors generally provides connectors for major Multidimensional sources like Essbase and Cognos but for tools like Qlikview, it Could be difficult.

some of the features where Qlikview lacks are:
1. Alerts- Capability to create alerts and delivers it to not only Email but blackberries, hand held devices, mobile phones etc. In version 9, I heard something for this has come. Also Qlikview do not have any integration with BPEL.
2. Multi user development environment- This feature allows multiple developers work on a single project and the utility synchronises the peices of project each developer is working with the main project.Qlikview completely lacks this feature and until version 9, I did not hear anything about this feature coming up.
3. Connect and extract data from multi dimentional objects- I guess for SAP BW, the connector is available but not for Hyperion Essbase, Cognos Cubes and Microsoft cubes.
4. Export data or metadata to XML- The reports cannot be exported to XML format which is one of the major disadvantage. We can use the XML reports as a data source with another softwares which understands XML.

5. XBRL- Qlikview does not support XBRL. Those who do not understand what is XBRL and why it is required and useful, please read this http://www.xbrl.org/WhatIsXBRL/
6. Seperate component for operational reporting or production reporting or Popularly known as Pixel perfect reporting (for example Printing Salary Cheques) and report bursting like BI publisher(previously XML publisher) or SQR reporting in Hyperion Essbase. But we can argue here in the sense that Qlikview is an analytical tool and is not made for such needs but definately it restricts you somewhere and do not provide you with an option.
7. Integration with Microsoft Office tools- Qlikview just exports the data into an excel file or exports a report object to a png file or using OCX you can do something to make it work with MS office tools(I never tried this). It nowhere stands in comparison with Hyperion Add-In or Cognos Add-In. This is one area which is very important from business users point of view and developing this feature may not be that easy for Qliktech.
8. Support for advance features like embedded browser(available in hyperion Interactive reporting), flickers(rolling messeges) etc as an standard options.
9. Metadata Management- There is no concept of Physical model, Business Model and Presentation Model. There are no subject areas. The End users had access to all the tables loaded to the Qlikview and the matter becomes difficult when you have large number of tables involved. For end users to create a report themselves, they need to identify the tables and columns from this long list which can make things difficult for them. The solution to this could be to create a seperate Qlikview document for every subject area. This greatly effects managebility and reusability. Those who have worked with Oracle BIEE BI Administrator or Cognos Framework manager or Business Objects Universe will understand the importance of subject areas or Packages.
10. Impact Analysis- If you want to make a change in the Qlikview script or datasource and want to know the impact of this change on report objects beforehand, you could be in problem and may have to check each and every report manually and document it.
11. Alternate Hirarchies- No concept of Alternate Hirarchies.
12. SQL Generation- If you want to see the SQL generated behind a query, you can not see that in Qlikview whereas other tools like OBIEE, Cognos, BO and Essbase allows you to see the SQL/MDX generated for a query. This feature may not be relevant to business users but for developers this helps a lot in their day to day activities like debugging or data validation.
13. Resolving circular loops and traps: The only way to resolve circular loopes in Qlikview is to create an alias table wheare as in BO and Cognos you can define contexts which allows you to resolve the circular loops without creating any alias table. When it come to resolving traps like Chasm and Fan traps, Qlikview is helpless.
some more issues -
1. Security- Qlikview does not have a graphical interface to create roles, users and privilages assigning to roles. Also can users be allowed to log in on certain weekdays only. Also can users change their passwords themselves using some interface. Does the password expires automatically after certain no of days and user will be asked to change it.
2. I am not sure if Qlikview can use user directory for external authentication like LDAP database or NTLM. Also can it be used with existing SSO(Single Sign On).
3. Does Qlikview has feature to automatically end the session if it is not being used to avoid any session hacking.
4. Is there any graphical interface to monitor the sessions in use. Check the queries they have fired, previous requests, kill any current requests, monitor time etc.

There are some good features in Qlikview as well:
1. The ability to consolidate the data coming from various sources(databases and flat files) which is in a common format in the data cloud(Qliktech uses this term). this is fantastic. In other OLAP tools sometimes it becomes difficult to join and RDBMS and a flat file data.

2. Many people criticise Qlikview for its associative logic which says the feild names with same names are joined automatically but the designer has the liberty to remove or edit those joins. Even Siebel analytics makes the joins automatically in BI Administrator and Hyperion Essbase sensing same field names.
It helps the designer to see the qualified members for joins and make amendments after verifying them.



Another post regarding Gartners BI Magic Quadrant 2009.
Any comments on this.





72 comments:

Ashish Awasthi said...

this is THE most comprehensive review i've read on qlikview. Though I did not find here, why is qlikview not a good choice in case of huge data? and what is lacking in qlikview for a multi user development environment? is it version control?
About having a UI for alerts, i believe you can make it using input box for contacts, pre-built list of events and a VB macro.

Manohar Rana said...

Hi,

1. Qlikview brings all the data to the system RAM or Memory Cache and if the data is huge the application will take more time to open and process calculations.
Siebel analytics stores the data in the hard disk but uses cache to save the query results or calculations so that for the same query, the result is available in the cache to enhance performance.

2. Multi user development- It is a complete feature where you can have the repository at one place and many users having their parts which can be merged and is synchronised with the central repository. Qlikview is not just lacking, it has to develop the complete feature. Here I am not talking workarounds.
3. Alerts- Good tools have more and more features using wizards, drag and drop features with minimum programming. for reasons like ease of use, less development time, better managebility etc. Qlikview has to do this to compete and not just providing the feature.

Please ask if you have more specific questions.

Regards

Manohar Rana

Unknown said...

Thanq Rana, whatever information u had given about QlikView its very nice. Now i need some more information about QlikView. Mainly i need difference between other BI tools and QlikView BI tool

Thanks
Manoj

Unknown said...

Ho Rana,

canu send me the some more information QlikView

1) how to connect the database with reporting tool and how to design the modelling part in this tool

Manohar Rana said...

Hi Manoj,

I have posted a new comment 'Getting Started with Qlikview'. I have shown there how to connect to your database and make quick reports from them.
Please ask if you have any technology or features related questions.

Link
http://businessintelligencedw.blogspot.com
/2008/07/getting-started-with-qlikview.html

Manohar Rana

Sudhir said...

Manoj If you really wanted to know about qlikView Better u ask a vendor for a Presentation followed by POC on your data. you can contact me for any such demo or POC on QlikView. Pls note down my Phone no- 9312667720

Sudhir said...

Hii you can contact me for QlikView Demo at 9312667720 my email id is -sudhir@iconresources.com

Manohar Rana said...

Hi Sudhir,
Thanks for replying on my blog.
My blog is read very frequently by students and working professionals.
Let me know if I could do something for you.

Regards

Manohar Rana

Manohar Rana said...

Hi,
Qlikview users may like to read this post as well.
http://businessintelligencedw.blogspot.com/2008/09/hyperion-interactive-reporting.html

Manohar Rana

Unknown said...

I work with QV for 2 years and i think that is very good software. Easy to use (like user and developer). QV really may be is not the choice for huge data but we try the "Billion records" demo (report based on billion records) and the machine that we used was not so expensive the unusual in this machine was that has 12Gb of RAM. But with all billion records loaded QV used max 8Gb of ram. I really want to see this software expanding with new features :-)

Manohar Rana said...

Hi Nazgul,
Good to see a Qlikview consultant. Thanks for posting some specs which could be useful in server sizing. Please correct me if I am wrong, You loaded 1 table with 1 billion records in memory and it consumed 8 GB of RAM.

I have few more questions on this-
1. Is RAM consumption linear meaning suppose I have 2 billion records, will it take 16 GB of RAM?

2. How much RAM will it take if I have two tables having primary foreign relationship(one simple join) of 1 billion each.
If you are doing any test and have some more findings , Please post them as well.

Thanks
Manohar Rana

Unknown said...

Hi Manohar,

The file with a billion records was QlikTech's demo and it was fully working report (with chars, pivots etc.). There is not just one table but the main table was with billion records

I'm not sure that the memory usage is linear. In this report there is several simple joins and all of this consume max 8Gb of RAM.
In QV synthetic keys (join between 2 or more tables by 2 or more fields) consume memory. But in QV this can be avoided with force creation of autonumber function. This function generate unique key with using 2 or more fields(example you have 2 tables T1 and T2 and this tables are joined by 2 fields F1 and F2. using autonumber is this: autonumber(F1&F2) as F. Then two tables are joined with simple join by field F). Using this function will avoid this keys and usage of the memory can be reduced. Other things is that with QV 8.5 come and report (not sure about the name) with which can be analyzed QV report files - which table how many memory consume, how many space on hdd consume, synthetic keys how many memory use and etc.

Manohar Rana said...

Thanks Nazgul for posting this valuable information. Joining if two fields you mentioned, it is same as creating a composite key.
I last worked on 8.1 version and then the writeback feature was just introduced which we use to demo for what-if analysis. But it was not very effective and in some cases does not use to work correctly.
How is this feature now.
Anybody reading this, if you have some information then do post.
Thanks
Manohar Rana

xxxxx said...

Hi,

Is there a connector for Qlikview to retrieve data from Essbase Cubes into Qlikview?

Manohar Rana said...

Hi,

I am doubtful at the first place whether Qlikview works on multidimentional sources. If that is not the case let me know.

Manohar Rana

Sudhir said...

Dear xxxx,
QlikView use ODBC or OLEDB to connect with any database in case of SAP it requires a connector.

Manohar Rana said...

Hi sudhir,
The connection for multidimensional sources is different than for relational sources(for which you use ODBC and OLEDB).
Some of the multidimensional sourses are Essbase, Microsoft analytical services, IBM DB2 OLAP, SAP BW etc.
Qlikview does connect to SAP but not SAP BW and other multidimensional sources.

Sudhir said...

Hii Rana Ji,
Good to see ur feedback on multidimensional source Specialy with SAP BW. We have exaples with multiple development options in sap case.
one can use either SAP or SAP BW dataware house which is multidimentional source we do have some customer examples where they are pulling data from sap BW. one of the customer is pulling data from cognos based dataware house.

Unknown said...

hi rana,

thks for the information ...i am new to this QlikView.three yrs i worked in .net..want to know the future of QlikView

Unknown said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Unknown said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Unknown said...

Manohar,
We are planning to implement data warehosuing (denormalized Data model) - we are using ETL for that. Now for reporting we have a choice between BO and QlickView. What feature ClickView lacks when compared to BO ? Can we do dynamic queries (reports) using QV ?

Manohar Rana said...

Hi,
Let me know how big is your organisation in terms of no of BI users, number of applications, no of offices worldwide and whether the implementation would be departmental level or organisational level.
You mentioned you are planning to implement datawarehouse model which gives some indication that implementation is not going to be at a department level.
Now, I would suggest do not come to a conclusion by just one capability like ability to do dynamic query reports.
Whats your role in the mplementation.
Before suggesting something I need to ave some information on BI capabilities which may be required immediately and and future as well.
I am afraid your question is something which cannot be answered without having the complete details.

Manohar Rana said...

Hi Amy,

I understand in this world of rapidly changing software tools and technologies, it becomes very difficult to decide whether to stay with it or not.
Remember, dont think from a product or tool persective. Think of technology.
I would say you already have made a good decision moving to Business Intelligence with the help of Qlikview.
Qlikview definately is a good tool and I really enjoyed it when I was working on it a Year back.
When I started working on Oracle OBIEE and Hyperion Essbase, I started to understand the technology better.
so after some time it doesn't really matter to me whether tools die or live but I am sure that technology will never die but only will grow and change.
Do let me know if you wish to have more discussion.
Please post your comments.
Good Luck

Sudhir said...

Dear Sybase DBA,
BO was a good tool when in memory technology was not available/populer actually when we talk about QlikView I can defenatly telll you there are different way to go to dublin but why we dont choose most efficient and hadny way to go there that you just have came to know. I have no of customers who have switched from traditional BI tool to QlikView Like Pernord Ricard (I) . Ltd ( Formerly Seagrams). Adidas TATA AIG have or had traditional BI tools but they have compleatly swiched to or gradualy switching all BI needs to QlikView. Even I am a sales person handling QlikView sales in North India if you want I can help you to get best comparision as well as best offer. you can contact me at sudhir@iconresources.com or call me at +91-9312667720

Chad said...

I just wanted to say thank you. My company recently installed Qlikview. It seems like a great tool, but I'm still trying to figure out exactly how it fits into the enterprise. This post and the comments have been extremely helpful.

Unknown said...

Hi,

I need Some clarification QlikView is capable for "What if?" analysis. any kind of complex multi-stage caluculations..

If yes/No give me with brief example regarding the above comments....

Regards,
subbu
obul.subbarayudu@gmail.com

Sudhir said...

Dear Obul,
Yes QlikView is capable of doing any kind of What is analysys and again whith QlikView 8.5 multi stage calulations become more pore full. Can I know if u are evaluating QlikView then where and with which vendor u are orking with ??? idf you want I can sen you an example of what -if analysys. you may contact me at +91-9312667720, email-sudhir@iconresources.com

Manohar Rana said...

Hi,

Obdul- What-if analysis is very interactive in Qlikview but at a very basic level. If you want to compare what-if capabilities, take a look at Essbase also which is widely used for what-if, planning and budgeting etc besides your OLAP analysis.
As Qlikview do not store the values you put into the memory only, it vanishes after you close the application and hence cannot be referenced at a later stage.
What-if in qlikview can be done either by using a slider which has a variable attached to a field say COGS(Cost of goods sold). Changing the slider will calculate the profit field and the numbers changes. You can also change the values of COGS manually and see the effect.
Can you post an example of multi-stage calculation scenario example to understand and suggest better.
however you can also ask sudhir to show you muli stage example. I am sure he mignt be having one.

Sudhir- Can you also share the information with my blog readers. If you have an example of how Qlikview handles this, please post so that all of us can benefit.

Sudhir said...

Dear Obul/Rana Ji,

I am not agree with Manohar Rana that qlikview can not handle such What-if Analysys. Even with QlikView 8.5 you can store it for future refference. In any version you can use BookMark oftion to store valuse as well as selections in what-if analysys. If you see whats new in WlikView 8.5 series you can have these example.

Unknown said...

Hi Sudhir/Rana,

Thanks for your replies. Then I would like to know the strong disadvantages of qlikview?

And the major comparision between BUSINESS OBJECTS AND QLIKVIEW. Which tool is beterr for reporting in costwise and along with other paramenters.....

Regards,

Sudhir said...

Obul I will sugest you if you can share your contact details with me so I can give you call as well as I can provide you with comarision with BO/traditional BI atrchitecture and QlikView. we do have arround 200 customers with QlikView and I am sure it would good spending some time with you on this.. Below are my contact details
Mobile- +91-9312667720, Email-sudhir@iconresources.com I request you to provid your contact details also.

Sudhir said...

If you have any plan to evaluate/Buy QlikView Licences/Services conatact me at sudhir@iconresources.com or Moblie-no- +91-9312667720

Unknown said...

Manohar,
We are implementing BI accross a business fuction level. This will include
1. Scheduled reports - sent via email
2. User using reports dynamically
3. user doing what if analysis.
4. Users going to have Dashboards and speedometers.
I am the Technical and Admin PM for the project. My speciality is in Database warehousing.

Manohar Rana said...

Hi Sybase,
1. Scheduled reports- Qlikview can send the scheduled reports but I am not sure if this can be done without writing any macros. Please check on this. Having this feature out of the box will be desirable.
2. User using reports dynamically- Qlikview is very much capable and interactive in creating reports dynamically or changing parameters dynamically.
3. user doing what if analysis- Possible to some extent. Read one of the comment above and decide to which level you require that. If it is going to be used by financial analysts and to create models, please check carefully and insist on showing it in a POC or demo.
4. Users going to have Dashboards and speedometers- Qlickview is very competive in this area of visualisation.
I really apologise for replying so late but last some weeks were really hard because of Q2 ending and global slowdown.

Sudhir said...

you guys can also reffre http://qlikviewvsolap.blogspot.com/
to have a artical on Why QlikView- A Need based comparision.

Sudhir said...

Hii Guys see my posting QlikView Vs Cognos at http://qlikviewvsolap.blogspot.com/

it is a comparision of Qlikview vs Cognos on more than 60 different points.

Naveen said...

Hi Manohar,

Please give me some information.
Can I have page format in Qlikview.
For example in BO we have option like "Page layout". This will be useful to print some, say 100 customer details at a time in different pages. And one more question is can save the report as PDF??
Thanks in Advance,
Naveen.

Sudhir said...

Hii See my new post QlikView Vs. BO at http://qlikviewvsolap.blogspot.com/

Ramunas Balukonis said...

Hi Nazgul,
Can we still find this 1 billion demo? I would be very interesting to see.

Thanks,
Ramunas

Unknown said...

Hi Ramunas,
i'm not sure i can find the demo :-(

Unknown said...

Dear Mr. Rana.....

after going thru ur post reg "qlikview vs others"..........i really wonder wether you worked on qlikview and that too for more then a year ... and if you really do then i must say u dont have any idea abt the said tool. you better quite job and first invest time to go thru tool in depth ..... some ppl explore product and some jus like you invest time in bad mouthing abt the product .......

all thr so called LACKS of qlikeview are very much possible in QV .. that you wud have figured out IF & only IF you cud have managed to work on TOOL

gud luck ....buddy study hard

Manohar Rana said...

Hi,

Naveen- You can create reports in report editor available in Qlikview under 'Reports' menu wherein you can drag a report object(reports, charts etc) in that layout and you can generate a pdf out of that.

Archana- I appreciate and welcome your comments. I really apologise if I had dissapointed you in any way.

Sudhir said...

Dear Archana,
You look like a fan girl of QlikView. And you showed aggression on QlikView by your comment. I also love to see your comments on my blog http://qlikviewvsolap.blogspot.com/

I also wanted to say on your comment Manohar Rana is a talented guy and have very good experience on BI software’s including QlikView. We have worked together on several successful projects on QlikView. It is really harsh to say that he needs to refresh his knowledge on QlikView. May be your view on QlikView is not matching with what Manohar Rana said on his blog. We need to be polite with bloggers as they invest their time to help us to evaluate any tool.
Regards
Sudhir Kumar Singh
http://qlikviewvsolap.blogspot.com/

Sudhir said...

Hii freinds see my recent artical on Drawbacks of QlikView.

http://qlikviewvsolap.blogspot.com/

Unknown said...

Did your guys look at Style Intelligence by InetSoft? It's enterprise BI platform with advanced visualization that seems to address many shortcoming you mentioned here.

Debashish said...

Hi Manohar ,
Thanks for so wonderful information. I have worked in Version 8.5 Qlikview , and i have loaded 3 Billion records in QVD file.with Window 2003 EP edition & 32Gb of RAM.

Regards
Debashish.

Arvind Tikku said...

Dear Rana,

Whatever we guys worked on Qlikview was ver 7 wereby Qlikview had just started competing with giants Oracle,SAP BW,Cognos,BO,WebFocus etc.

But if you see with ver 9.0.7527
lot of changes have taken place

In terms of Enterprise Product.

QlikView Server has now components such as Access point which is a web portal interface to access QV docs in QVS,QVS now can schedule jobs.

Qlikview Management console you can now add users define their role

Lates Deployment which i have done has daily refresh of close to 5 Crore records and i am using QVS caching services to preload the doc before users access the Applications and this task is scheduled.Without the user noticing it what is happening at server side.

QlikView is noe slowly maturing as a Enteprise Product .It will take time but it is already in the race.


Google US is the Lates to have appreciated QV Analytics.and is already running QV 9 platform 100 users is the initial Pack.


Oracle itself struggled with Discoverer before finnaly it accquired Hypherion.


Regards
Arvind Tikku

Arvind Tikku said...

Although oracle can now say by Bundling Hypherion/Essbase as OBIEE

But the fact Remains that both Microsoft/Oracle struggled to have sapce in BI world and both were late entrants to this space.

This world was primarily ruled by Cognos/BO/Hypherion/SAS/SAP BW

before Microsoft and Oracle wokeup and realised that BI is a potential market.

Since they had money it was easy for them to buy enterprise product and fill in their BI space...

I may not have worked on many BI tools but few are QV/BO/Maia intelligence and now Dundas Dasboards

Manohar Rana said...

Debashish- Thanks for sharing your experience. Keep posting such valuable information.

Tikku- Love to see you in my blog and your confidence in Qlikview. Thats a pretty valuable information.
I am happy to see that with every version Qlikview is getting better.
Keep Posting.

Unknown said...

Take a look at our tool. On top of BI and dashboards we migrate all this management information with the business perspective. You will see your dashboard on a Bizmap that represents you business from A to Z enabling you to zoom into any process/workflow to quickly identify causes. We integrate functionalities of QV, SAP BO, Aris and fully support automated reporting, alerting, PDCA, collaboration, execution engines, compliance management, OLAP and any other management wish you might have. All in one platform: VisionWaves Delta. Got curious? Have a look at our website: www.visionwaves.com or feel free to contact me at m.vanlokven@visionwaves.com

Unknown said...

we have requirement of trainer on Hyperion.
if intrested please contact on 9930720237/9869427145

Chandan Suryawanshi said...

Try using the Best Business Intelligece solution ever which gives you the flexibility to design any report without any programming knowledge.

End users can create reports with drag n drop and do their detailed analysis with drill down and get the data in real time without any data warehouse.

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Contact:
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0091-22-4076-5555
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Unknown said...

Manohar, goofed and meant to add my comment to this post, not your most recent post. How does QlikView compare to iDashboards? Any experience with the iDashboards product?

Manohar Rana said...

Hi,

Chandan - The toll might be having a good end user interface, flexibility and ease of creating reports however when you say it does not require a datawarehouse tells us that it is a ROLAP tool and no ROLAP tool ever requires a datawarehouse. It is always optional and totally depends on your data volumes, complexities and implementation requirements.

Ryan - I just heard of idashboards. Will definately take a look at it sometime. Good Luck.

Regards

MAnohar Rana

Arvind Tikku said...

i dashboards are plugin sort software where we have predefined queries and on these queries we build dashboards.

Delta master is a similar tool with additional charts such as ticker,sparkline,trellis

Unknown said...

Cockpit Consulting.com has a QlikView connector for xbrl.

Cockpit Consulting are at the forefront of the development of the new language for electronic communication of business and financial data which is revolutionising business reporting around the world: XBRL. They are an international member of XBRL organisation and have developed a unique QlikView XBRL connector enabling QlikView to process XBRL data feeds as any other datasources.

Sudhir said...

Dear philippe can I have more information on same... If possible pls share something about XBRL.

my id is sudhir@iconresources.com

Arvind Tikku said...

guys one question for which i am searching answer for last 2 years is.

Is In Memory BI technology a right approach or will it lead to failure as happened with big giants like Cognos Business Objects Hypherion....

Would appreciate views from all section of people working on different BI products/Technologies.

Arvind Tikku said...

will business intelligence software continue to drive the business processes in organisation or in future we will have to depend on other things/technology to cater to our business needs.Or will there be new technology.

Arvind Tikku said...

Slowly changing dimension:

Guys if anyone is having knowledge about this concept then please share this.

I am preparing Employee hiearchy which i require in my incentive distribution application.

I am maintaining history table which contains all information about employees,reporting heads and effective dates.

I am facing problem that when am employee leaves .it is not immediately updated in system .So my incentive reports shows wrong information if an employee has left.

How can this be handled..

Regards

Arvvind

RAvi said...

It seems the competing BI products currently in the market is Panorama and Qlikview. Does anyone know what is the difference between two regarding the technology. Is Panorama OLAP based technology

Manohar Rana said...

Hi,

Philippe- Thanks for keeping us updated.
Tikku - nice to see u again. I am curious why you kept your question to yourself for so long.:)
Doing a thing one way or the other has its own set of pros and cons and it really does not matter if it is acheiving the end results. Qlikview is in the market for quite some time and has been deployed at so many places and hence we can say that Qlikview in memory technique has been tested substantially. So we have a reason to show some faith it it.
I don't think it will lead to any sort of failures to other players. one's success should not necessarily be seen as failure of others. Others are also playing their role sucessfully. It's just that their overall share in the market may get reduced a bit. In a way this is helpful as major vendors will have increased pressure to remain competitive.

About your next question- BI definately helps in taking better decisions and hence aids drive business processes in a better informed manner and its role will keep growing in future. Its not that just BI is driving the business processes. There are other tools/technologies which play an importnat role and keep doing so.

Regarding SCD question, what I understood is your Employee dimension table do a lookup on the history table. and till the record on the history table is not updated, the employee is still seen as not terminated and hence gives incorrect result in the report. what I suggest is get the history table updated as soon as the employee is terminated/resigns. If for any reason this is difficult then make your employee dimension table SCD type 2. But I have one doubt why do not you have a column in your employee dimension table which stores the last working day. because SCD would be required in cases where employee is transferred or some other attributes changes with time. I think you can simply add a new column in employee dimension for storing last working date and keep it null for employees still on roles.

Regards

Manohar Rana

Unknown said...

I run a small software company in the ERP space and I am interested in taking up Qlikview as an offering. Any suggestions on the best way to get trained on Qlikview, such as self training or e-training or classroom training and how long does it take to become productive on it.

Arvind Tikku said...

Hi the best way is to go for web learning.u can go to qlikview.com and take a classroom training and if you are a average user of excel that is you know how to input data in excel spreadsheets ,prepare pivot tables ,do subtotaling,grandtotal u acn learn Qlikview in 8 days.


Regards
Arvind

Unknown said...

Any classroom training available in Mumbai.

Arvind Tikku said...

Dear Subash,

Classroom Training can be provided by Freelancers as well as BI consultancy Companies.
Through consultancy it will be 6 days program for which they will charge you anything between 30-40 K.

Freelancers will be able to give you at very cheap rates.And the contents will be exhaustive as per industry standards.

Make a choice and then definitely Training can be arranged.

Regards
Arvind

Me said...

Nice blog! Very detailed..
I recently used Qlikview version 11 for a POC and found it pretty good. I know it definitely lacks few things..top of my list were "MAP Integration"(I know we can achieve it using Google maps or Qlikview map extension but it's obviously not convenient)and a UI for setting up security.
However, I was able to connect to user directories like LDAP. We also created a metadata scanner/monitor to monitor different tasks and activities.Looking forward for some more material on Qlikview like this..

Manohar Rana said...

Thanks Me. I know Qlikview has become a very matured BI Software now. Keep posting your findings.

James Zicrov said...


Thank you so much for throwing light on such an important topic of Qlik Sense. I really feel such kind of blogs should be posted frequently.


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Python said...

Thanks For Sharing.
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