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Friday, July 4, 2008

Learn Qlikview

I have posted a tutorial for how to create quick dashboard in Qlikview at
Manohar Rana: Getting Started with Qlikview

You amy also like to read detailed comparison of Qlikview with others tools at

Qlikview Vs Others

You can also refer to the complete tutorial provided by Qliktech at

Qliktech Tutorial

Thursday, July 3, 2008

Business Intelligence Will Decline

Gartner Says Strong Growth in Business Intelligence Will Decline as Market Flux Continues

Analysts Discuss Shifting Business Intelligence Landscape at Gartner Business Intelligence Summit, 5-7 February 2008

Egham, UK, January 10, 2008 — The days of strong double-digit growth in the business intelligence (BI) market are over as the industry enters a state of flux following vendor consolidation, increasing maturity and price erosion, said Gartner. However, BI remains mission critical for businesses as it turns information into an asset for deriving insight and making decisions. Gartner advised end users to make BI pervasive to business users by making it user-friendly, collaborative and process-driven.

Speaking ahead of the Gartner BI Summit, held from 5-7 February in Amsterdam, Netherlands, Gartner analysts said worldwide growth rates in 2007 are expected to be slightly lower than the previous year, at 12.5 per cent, and will move into single-digits beyond $7 billion by 2011, with a five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 8.6 per cent.

Following consolidation among BI vendors, Gartner added that value to users can also increase as a result of mergers and acquisitions in the market. “Consolidation activities by SAP, Oracle, IBM and Microsoft should help accelerate the value derived from BI,” said Gartner senior research analyst and presenter at the Gartner BI Summit, Dan Sommer. “Large vendors will drive increased usage, while new BI vendors will emerge introducing innovative technology and products to demonstrate differentiation and fill the gaps in "mega-vendors'" product lines.”

Competitive edge
Mr Sommer added that increased BI innovation also means that query, reporting and online analytical processing (OLAP) capabilities have reached parity and no longer deliver competitive edge. Most vendors now include these basic BI capabilities in their product stacks, including Microsoft which added more BI functionalities in SQL Server 2005, Office 2007 and PerformancePoint Server. Remaining pure-play vendors can recruit application vendors (not SAP, Oracle or Microsoft) as original equipment manufacturers (OEM) of their BI platform to provide analytical applications, or leverage relationships with value-added resellers (VARs) for domain-specific solutions.

Successful pure-play BI vendors will incorporate emerging areas in BI such as dashboards, predictive modelling, enterprise search, interactive visualisation techniques and in-memory analytics. Hosted BI through software-as-a-service (SaaS) is one new approach being pioneered by a cluster of vendors including Seatab and LucidEra. They can also continue thriving by specialising by industry or geographic region. In addition, smaller and midsize organisations are becoming an important target market for BI vendors, with a large proportion being new opportunities.

Mega-vendor dominatio
The acquisitions by Oracle (Hyperion), SAP (Business Objects, still pending) and IBM (Cognos, still pending) in 2007 were disrupters for the market, which, if they are finalised, will eliminate all larger publicly traded BI companies. Overall, more than two-thirds of the current BI market is now attributed to the mega-vendors. The remaining BI powerhouse vendors SAS, Microstrategy, Information Builders, and more so, smaller BI vendors, such as Arcplan, Panorama, or Qliktech, will need to increase market push to stay visible above the increased noise from the “big four.”

North America, Western Europe and Japan are the most-significant regions in terms of BI spending and will still account for five-sixths of software revenue by 2011. However, "greenfield" opportunities, together with fast economic and structural developments, will fuel double-digit growth in Asia/Pacific, Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and Latin America.

End users
Gartner advises end users of BI solutions from vendors that have been recently acquired to hold strategic investments until a product roadmap has been clearly presented from the vendor. While there is no doubt that the acquired core products, such as Oracle’s Hyperion Essbase, Business Objects XI, or Cognos 8 will remain highly strategic and supported by extensive research and development funding, overlapping products in a vendor’s portfolio may see some defocus in the mid-term.

For more information on the Gartner BI Summit and to register for the event, please visit europe.gartner.com/bi.

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.