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.