Qlikview Personal Edition

Hi,

Qlikview is the emerging name in the Business Intelligence world and becoming very popular among the user community due to its easy to use interface, fast deployment and very strong visualisation.

Qliktech released its version 9 recently with a new Edition called Qlikview 9Personal Edition having all the developer features.

Earlier Qlikview use to provide only 15 days of evaluation period for people who want to give it a try which is really a very small duration to try or evaluate a Business Intelligence Tool.
This limits the user to use it beyond that period.

Now with version 9, Qliktech allows to download the personal edition from their website for free and use the product for personal use for an unlimited period of time and does not require any key.

So, that in real sense a very good news for the student community as well as for startup businesses or small growing businesses to use Qlikview for their personal use.

As small business generally has lot of data in flat files or excel files, Qlikview becomes a very handy Business Intelligence Software as Qlikview is very easy and effective when you have lot of excel files or combination of flat files, desktop database and relational databases.

Now you can develop or get developed Business Intelligence applications and do your analysis to know more about your business. You can export the reports/charts to excel,pdf,gif or png images and email it to your business partners or other members of your Business.
You can also copy/send the complete Qlikview document to another machine where Qlikview free personal edition is installed.

And in future as your business grow and you have the right budget, you can get your personal edition converted to a licenced version without affecting your Qlikview Business Intelligence Application that you had created.

But there are some limitations of Qliview personal edition. As your Qlikview is not a licensed one, you cannot ask for any support from Qliktech which I think is not a big issue. You can manage your application without any support which generally is required for big deployments.

Another limitation is that you cannot use an application developed in Licensed version in your personal edition however an application developed in personal edition can be used with a licenced version.
The application developed in a licenced version when opened in personal edition does not load the data hence a reload of the Qlikview application with the fresh data is required which effectively means that the person having the personal edition should have all the data(flat files or excel files) or access to relational databases to reload the application.

Another limitation is that you cannot publish your dashboards over the web to share it with other users as the personal edition does not provide the web component which allows the users to access the application over the web using Internet browsers.
However, you can use utilities like desktop sharing, remote login or web conferences to allow someone to use that application but in that case you will have to expose your complete application. The person accessing the application through remote login can delete the application or make any modifications.

These limitations may not be relevant to most of the Students or Business Owners to use Qlikview personal edition for learning Qlikview or Using for your analysis.

Replacing scattered excel files with one single source of information will be a great benefit in terms of managebility, reusability and productivity which will save lot of your time and efforts.
Top class visualisation in reports and dashboards and ease of perfoming analytic operations like drill down, Top N analysis, Pivoting,identifying problems etc will be an added advantage.

From Qliktech's perspective, they have made a very strategic move and will give them benefits in the coming years and will also help them in growing their prospects base and users base. This will definately make Qliktech's reputation much better in the market and help in developing Brand.

Qliktech's major install base or user base is small business or large business with small deployments and this move will make its presence more stronger in this area. Also, the buyers risk on investment will be greatly reduced.

Not many companies provide free unlimited period evaluation versions of their Busniess Intelligence softwares. I know only one name i.e Oracle. Even SAP Business Objects and IBM Cognos does not provide more than 30 days evaluation.

I am hopeful that Qliktech very soon will appear in Gartner's Business Intelligence Magic Quadrant and will give a direct competition to the bigger vendors.

Manohar Rana

Getting Started with Qlikview

You can download the free 15 days evaluation version from

http://www.qlikview.com/download.htm

Installation is simple is quick without any configration.
Open Qlikview from the start menu.
Go to file – New to create an application. Save it.

This is how the interface will look like.

There are two types of options for relational databases. OLEDB and ODBC.Create a DSN and reference it Here. However you can create the DSN from Here also.

I have already created a DSN ‘SH’ and after selecting provide the username and password. Click on OK. A connection string will automatically appear on the screen.

Now click on Select button.

Select the correct owner. The table and columns available will appear.

Select the table required and columns. To select more than one table use ADD button.

Select table and click ADD. Again select another table and click ADD and so on.

Also check the Preceding load button just above add button.

You can see the script generated on the left pane.

Click on OK once completed.

The scipt will appear like this.

Save the application and click on Debug to see the effects. The fields with the same name will be joined automatically. Lets see the results.

Check limited load and let the rows be 10 only.

Click on Run button.

The script is run and finished. Click close.The fields will appear like this.

Click on OK. And save the application.

Click Ctrl+T. The relations will appear like this.

This relation is perfect hence no need to change any joins. Click on OK.

Now we will reload the application with complete data. Click on Reload button which is next to the edit script button. After reload is complete click on OK and save the application.

Now we Will try to create a sample report of country wise sales.

Right click on the window . Select New sheet object- chart.

Give window Title as Country Sales. Select the type of chart. This time let it be bar chart only. Click on Next.

Select Country Name as the Dimension.

Click on Next

Write this expression as shown.

Click on OK

Click on Finish to see the Raw report.
Now there are lot of options available to make it look more relevant and beautiful. But your report is made. With some few more changes it will look like this.
Play with it. Its a wonderful tool and you can make quick reports out of it.

Good Luck.