Saturday, December 27, 2008

Why QlikView

Why QlikView

The organization that do have Standard ERP, Customized ERP, CRM, Legacy System or combination of any of these have some frequent report in built in the system as well as they have a team which can modify the GUI of existing report or can create a entirely new report as on demand of management/end-users.
It is easy to say that we do have a team and we can create our new report by using some GUI editor software (Most of them are using Crystal Reports). But when those report which are Ad-hock in nature are very frequent or demand for those reports are high then normal practice is to bring data in excel. When use of excel is there then it increase pressure on IT-Team and most worsen situation comes when functional user starts making report in excel. It has two consequences first is that it is totally wastage of highly paid skill sets in development of reports second the truth may be altered while presenting these report to Management.
Now the question is what is the solution of this situation? The suggested solution is bellow
1. Reduce the use of excel sheets
Problem is my top management has a practice to see report in excel only?
2. Give your top management something that look like excel and they don’t require to learn anything extra.
Good Thing is QlikView GUI is almost Similar to Excel
3. The tool you have opted for should have capability to make reports faster than any other tool.
QlikView can implement in ¼ of time than any other BI software. In another way if you are making 50 reports in T Time in same time you can generate 200 QlikView reports and those reports would be dynamic in nature.
4. The tool you have opted for should have less vendor dependency ( Since you are looking for a tool which can fulfill your needs of ad hock reporting need you require 100% control on report development)
QlikView gives you freedom from vendor dependency as the person who knows SQL scripting can implement entire QlikView suite after 3 days of Enterprise an 2 days of professional training that your vendor can easily provide.
As well as in comparison to OLAP base technology where your control is limited to Cube level only, in QlikView you have full control up to data source level, you can easily add or delete a dimension in QlikView report and it is 100 % GUI based. Even to write a code you can use your mouse only in 70 % cases (As it has almost all functions and logics inbuilt and they are only click apart)
5. The tool you have opted should have multidimensional report and it should not be limited to aggregates only.
QlikView gives you n-dimensional reports (Where in OLAP you can get Maximum 7 dimensional report practically). It is best in aggregate as well as in detailed reports also. (you can have drill down up to transaction level.)
6. Management can travel with their reports.
One can easily carry their QlikView report with full functionality even when they are not connected to network (Provided if they do have valid authentication) it will show an time stamp when data has last refreshed.
7. The tool you have opted for should have very good past and future.
QlikView have more than 10000 customers in 90 countries. And it has 98 % project success rate in comparison to 38 % project success rate of OLAP based tools.
According to IDC QlikView is fastest growing BI software in the world and it is now adding 14 customers per working day across the globe.
It falls in Visionary Quadrant of Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for BI Software.
QlikView is Market leader in in-memory based software.Being in memory it is supported by Gartner as Gartner say by 2012 almost 70 % of Global to 1000 companies would bring their data in to the memory for analysis.

8. The tool you have opted for should have low cost of ownership without compromising of value. QlikView can implement in almost ½ the cost and it delivers 2*Value in comparison to traditional BI software. Initial investment is even 1/8 than any other traditional BI software
Now the Question is how to evaluate QlikView-?
I suggest seeing is believing. Call your vendor for a ½ day Proff of Concept (POC) on you data ask them to create some of your management’s report on your data by directly pulling from your transaction system.
For any POC on QlikView feel free to contact me at
Sudhir Kumar
Mobile- +91-9312667720 or write me at
sudhir@iconresources.com

40 comments:

  1. Hi Sudhir,

    Congrats for you Blog. I Know its going to be very informative and interesting.

    Good Luck.

    Regards
    Manohar Rana

    ReplyDelete
  2. Ran Ji Thanks.. Request your valuable feed back on this..

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hi Sudhir

    As discussed pl. let me know how to pass the parameter to Stored Procedure executed in QlikView Script using the sheet object input box and controling the load data from the stored procedure.
    e.g date is the parameter to be passed to my stored procedure i want to know how while loading the sheet input box prompt will appear where user can enter the date thus loading that data till that date only. This i require also for User ID Password scenario where i can restrict the data for specific user on active sheet

    ReplyDelete
  4. Dear Rajesh,

    This is with reference to the telephonic discussion had with Mr. Sudhir and queries posted on this blog, we are pleased to clarify your above queries as under:-
    A. As per my understing you want to pass the parameter to store procedure while pulling the data from database using input box at some sheets, so you can declare a variable and assign that variable to some input box where you can enter the parameter value for the store procedure. You can use the same variable as parameter in your script like in place of parameter use this '$(variablename)'.
    B. For the security and data reduction you can go through the qlikview reference manual and call us for any further query.

    Regards,
    Dhananjay Mishra

    ReplyDelete
  5. Hi Dhananjay
    Thanx it worked just tell me how to delete the unnecessary varibales from qlickview

    ReplyDelete
  6. Dear Rajesh,

    It's very simple to remove unnecessary varibales from qlickview. Go to Setting - Variable Overview and select the variable from the list of variable and click remove button at right side of the variable overview popup window.

    Regards,
    Dhananjay Mishra
    dhananjay@iconresources.com

    ReplyDelete
  7. Hi Dhananjay,

    Good to see your comments.

    I have a query regarding Qlikview integration with MS office. At one place, I was asked to use Qlikview report objects in Powerpoint so that the powerpoint presentations do not needs to be created again and again.
    I couldn't do that.
    If you have some idea or workout or any feature in latest versions capable of doing this.

    Manohar Rana

    ReplyDelete
  8. Hi Rana,

    It's very simple to integrate qlikview application with Powerpoint with the help of Qlikview OCX. Let me tell you the whole porcedure;-
    1. Register the QlikOcx.ocx by Start-Run-regsvr32 "C:\Program Files\QlikView\QlikOcx\QlikOcx.ocx"
    2. Open a new powerpoint file and go to the developer tab and click on the control box to add the qlikocx into the the file.
    3. Once your control will be added then right click and go to properties tab of the QlikOcx and set the path of Qlikview application in Docname property of QlikOcx.
    4. Then you can see how the whole application is accessble in powerpoint with full functionality.

    Regards,
    Dhananjay Mishra

    ReplyDelete
  9. Even with new versing of QlikView that is 8.5 u need not to register for OCX components ( As said in release notes) but in earlier version like 8.2 it works once u register OCX as described by Dhananjay in Above Comment. Itried it in 8.2 once and it worked well.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Your chart is biased. I don't agree with plenty of your "informations". Folks, try to find infos also on other pages.

    Andrew Bucek
    Cognos Specialist

    ReplyDelete
  11. My dear freind Andrew this chart is not baised..
    If you think it is baised then based on the chart above kindly explain how? I would apreciate if you can share your knowledge with my respected readers.
    Cognos has become Old days story and it is supported by those IT guys how is from old school of thoughts.
    Facts from various reports says traditional BI projects has only 31 % succes rates It means you have 69 % chance to fail.
    Then why one should bother to evaluate traditional BI software.
    Freinds keep watching this blog for an artical "top x reasons why most of traditional BI projects are faild"

    ReplyDelete
  12. Hi Sudhir ,
    Can you also comment someting on the Hardware Requirments of QlikView , when (in my Case) we have very large data approx 3 Billion Records .
    and data continuously getting bigger (like 20 million getting added every day & purging 15 million every day).

    Regards
    Debashish

    ReplyDelete
  13. Dear Debashish,
    It is quite an interesting Question that I used to get every day during my sales meetings. If we talk about QlikView it is at right sided of Moors law. It can handle any amount of data/n-no of rows in database/table. Only thing it requires is high GB of RAM. Since QlikView is available for 64-bit architecture also, you can use 64-bit OS as today’s hardware are all 64-bit.
    But again this question remains that how much RAM is required to handle large amount of data. If you see QlikView use a very good memory handling technique based on Data reduction, since it execute on selections on run time the data present in the RAM is only related to active objects. (Active objects are those objects which are not minimized, and only one object at a time is suggested to be active, but with a click all undiminished objects will get refreshed in memory. It means your each selection is refreshing data in memory if it is not available during clicks. The technology it uses to do non-linear search that is AQL is also contributing to make it faster. However if you are interacting with any vendor as him to provide a PPT slide that is self explanatory about data modeling and memory handling in QlikView. Rest assures being in memory is strength of QlikView which help you to get analysis on fly with n number of dimensions.

    Debashish are you using QlikView or Evaluating it for you ?? If you are ealuating can I help you to evaluate and get you the best quote for this??

    ReplyDelete
  14. Hi Sudhir ,
    I am trying to evaluate it.
    Can QlikView Read data from a Oracle .dmp file.I was trying to read it . But it gave an error that "File Format too Old to read".
    I was using QlikView Ver 8.5 , in a 64 bit Environment. with 32 GB of RAM (Windows 2003 EP Edition)

    Regards
    Debashish.

    ReplyDelete
  15. Dear Debashish,
    May I know which ODBC driver you are using. and how you are creating a DSN?? We can have a con calll on it. you can contact me at +91-9312667720

    I can help you to evaluate and even we can arrange session with my cunsultant at your office without any obligation.

    ReplyDelete
  16. Hi Sudhir ,
    I have used IMP & EXp utility of oracle 10g to create a DMP file and i have FTPed the DMP file in the Developer m/c where Qlikview is installed. I am trying to read the DMP file from the Edit script option.
    and i am geting thois error.

    Regards
    Debashish.

    ReplyDelete
  17. Dear Debasish,
    QlikView can connect any database by using either ODBC or OLEDB, CSV files,XML tables and SAP by using a connector. In your case you ae not coonecting to data base but you are trying to connect with dump of Oracle 10g. Thats the reasion you are not able to pull data. I suggest you to create DSN with Oracle 10g to pull data in QlikView. Also note that by doing so QlikView will not manupualte any thing as it do not support DML while pulling data. Or you can take a snapshot of database or can use your development server to pull data by using DSN.

    ReplyDelete
  18. Hi Sudhir ,
    I am not using any DML Statement. Its purely for Reporting purpose. Our data is 3 Billion records in 6 Tables. We cannot pull the data over the network as the Snap Shot Utility of oracle fails after a specified period of time.Pulling data over the network is a slow operation. That is why we thought of using the DMP file. Thanks for you information .Qlikview Cannot read the data from a Oracle DMP file .Do you suggest any other alertnative to pulling data over the network.

    Regards
    Debashish.

    ReplyDelete
  19. Dear Debashish,
    Pulling data from network by using QlikView is not an issue and 3 Billion records in 6 Tables is not a big data size. My no of customers are pulling data over networ even if the data server is in another country. I suggest you use ODBC to pull data directly from database server over network or yoi can istall QlikView localy ( Local to DB server)and save data in .QVD file then get those .QVD,s at your machine ( Local to you) . But first one is

    ReplyDelete
  20. HI Sudhir / Experts: Are there any specific best practices / memor settings that need to be applied while working with QlikView. M initial assessment of this tool has been great .

    Any thougts will be greatly appreciated.

    ReplyDelete
  21. Hii Anonymous,
    Your concern on memory handling is obvious as QlikView is in memory based tool. If you see, over all performance of QlikView is great and it gives result on fly. The technology it use is AQL + In memory technology. You can see in any example dashboard from QlikTech that is freely available on www.demo.qlikview.com at a time only one object (That may be a graph or a chart look at the boundary of object it’s color is more dark/sharper than others) is active, once you click on any value/dimension/object all graphs/reports/objects changes. you will Notice apart from those which are visible to you there are some objects which are minimized ( It means they are not using memory) once you click on minimized object at least one object goes minimized ( It depend on user which object, or set of objects he wanted to see once he open the application and other remain minimized for example a dash board contains 10 reports (Objects) but one may want to see two Speedo meters and one detailed table it means other 7 reports (Objects) will remain minimized and they would not be using memory during clicks ) This feature is a natural feature of QlikView and you have choice to use it or not (Auto minimized reports also give good GUI to end user as they can easily switch between report). Even in any program you are writing in any language it require to reduce unnecessary code for example infinite loops but you need not to be very much care full for these in QlikView. There are some documents available on topic data modeling and memory handling in QlikView ( It is also the part of QlikView onsite training that your vendor will provide you) and those are very simple techniques that and very fundamental and common across all database programing.

    Hope you will find QlikView as the best tool in your life. I recommend you to use QlikView and I promise you will say wow !!! With every Qlik (Click)

    ReplyDelete
  22. Hi Sudhir,
    I prepare a presentation about Qlikview and i try to figure out its feautures by using the evaluation version.
    I see that it's a very powerful BI solution for many cases.I also read the article of Rana.But i have some more questins :

    1. Can you say in which cases QlikviEw is not the right solution ?

    2. I wonder also if QView supports multi user development environment like SVN ?

    Regards,
    Kurtulus

    ReplyDelete
  23. Since QlikView can get information from any type of plain file, Excel or Database to use in its internal database, in a DW Strategy would it be better to build a DataMart or DW database structure (defining facts and dimensions) and get information from it rather than getting information from raw files?

    Hugo Calderon
    IT Consultant

    ReplyDelete
  24. Dear Kurtulus I have Answerd you Question no 1 in my latest post "Draw Backs of QlikView"

    and I will taek some more time to andswer Quest no 2.

    Dear Hugo,
    Give me aday or two o answer your question I am sorry for you inconvenience.

    ReplyDelete
  25. Hi,

    Debashish- Install Oracle database Server on your local machine where you have the dump and then import this dump file into Oracle database and then you would be able to load data in Qlikview.

    Kurtulus- I don't think Qlikview has MUD utility but there are manual workarounds to let multiple developers work simultaneously.

    Hugo- Building datamarts definately has lot of advantages for any reporting purposes. But sometimes due to budget constraints we do not go for any datawarehousing solutions or if the database size is small. Storing data in any properietery files has always some risk and limitations attached to it.
    About getting data from raw files, try avoiding it as much as you can. Try to feed as much data as you can directly from the database source and if that is not possible or difficult, use flat files.
    Hope that would have answered your question to some extent.

    Regards
    Manohar Rana

    ReplyDelete
  26. Does QlikView has integrate ETL tool.

    I read somewhere and after donig some analysis I found It has Scripting for loading the data.
    So out of Extraction,tansformation and loading it support loading only with some extent of transformation.But there is not any way to schedule the script.Like if you consider some ETL tool there will be scheduler for the ETL processes which is not there in QlikView.Am I right?

    ReplyDelete
  27. Yes QlikView has integrated ETL in it. It has script for loading the data as once its load the data it query loaded data in non linear way by using patented technology AQL.

    Also note that scheduling of data reload is possible in QlikView. With stand alone developer one can write a script that can be executed with windows scheduler for reloading of data.
    If you are evaluating QlikView why don’t you ask a QlikView vendor for a SIB (Seeing is believing) exercise on your own data.

    ReplyDelete
  28. Also see my recent post
    " The Reasons Why 69 % cube based BI project fails and how QlikView have Success Rate about 98 %" at

    http://qlikviewvsolap.blogspot.com/2009/08/reasons-why-69-cube-based-bi-project.html

    ReplyDelete
  29. i created one stored procedure in sqlserver 2005
    the procedure name is 'prasad'
    how i call this stored procedure in qlickview
    there is no option in qlickview?

    Please Help Me.......

    ReplyDelete
  30. it is possible dynamic variable in qlickview?

    ReplyDelete
  31. Dear Sudhir, i like your above comment, i am interested to learn QlikView, can you let me know, where can i got Professorial Training, if i want to become a consultant or developer in QlikView

    thanks
    bibhaskara@gmail.com

    ReplyDelete
  32. Hi Dhananjay Mishra

    I have followed the steps that you have given in for embedding qlikview into powerpoint. After adding OCX component into power point as said I have set the path of qv app in Docname property of qlikocx. But I couldn't see the application in the power point. It is same as before. It is displaying only qlikview ocx component but no targeted app init.

    Do we need to give the license number here. We are using the leased license. May I know how can I call the qv app in powerpoint using this.

    Waiting for your reply

    Regards

    qvforum

    ReplyDelete
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    •Define the first sheet with all the attributes added – as a Template•Copy these objects to all the sheets and create more sheets:•Visual Representation Approaches
    –Distributions – various ‘-wise’ views –Trends – various ‘time based’ views
    •Dashboard Sheets
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