● There is a business problem that needs to be solved
● There is a valid reason for the results
All of these are valuable outcomes! The power to show you what is related and what is not related is a key feature of Qlik’s patented associative logic.
Exercise 2.1: Experience Green, White, and Gray in QlikView 11
1. Open QlikView.
2. To open an existing document, use the menu command File ⇒ Open. Navigate to the folder containing the electronic materials for this book, subfolder \Apps, and open the document Example Sales Analysis.qvw.
3. From the Sales tab, select three products in the Product list box – Baby Jacket L Black, Blue, and Green, as shown in Figure 2-6.
Figure 2-6: Product selections
a. 3.1. Click on the first product in the list and hold down the left button while dragging down. Let go of the mouse button when you’re hovered over the third product in the list. The Product list box should look like the one in Figure 2-6, with the three products highlighted in green.
b. Notice the values associated in other fields (in white) – as well as the values not associated with your selections (in gray).
4. Explore the data by making other selections and viewing the charts on the Trends tab. Notice that selections are persistent as you navigate tabs.
5. Clear selections by clicking on the Eraser icon in the caption of each list box, or within the Current Selections box.
In addition to the common green, white, and gray selection states, Qlik Sense offers an easier way to handle the lesser-known states of Alternate and Select Excluded. These states are described in Chapter 16.
Direct and Associative Searches
QlikView’s associative logic offers the ability to conduct direct and indirect (associative) searches either within a single field or the entire data set. To demonstrate, let’s take a look at the bread-and-butter visualization object in any QlikView application – the list box. List boxes are used to display the values found in a single field in the data model. Values can be selected by directly clicking on them, or by searching. The direct and indirect search capability is illustrated in Figure 2-7.
Let’s assume that you want to search for a product in the Product list box. One way to initiate the search is to click on the magnifying glass in the caption of the Product list box and type in a search phrase. In this example, the phrase “jacket” is typed in the search box. The direct search results appear in yellow highlight in the Product list box. Associated results appear when you click on the chevron (>>). Notice that the phrase “jacket” was found in two other fields, Style and Style Short Name. You can either click on the exact results in the Product list box or select from the associated results to temporarily limit the products in the Product field.
Figure 2-7: Direct and associative search results
Exercise 2.2 describes the basics of the text search capability in QlikView.
Exercise 2.2: Search and Associative Search in QlikView 11
1. Open QlikView.
2. To open an existing document, use the menu command File ⇒ Open. Navigate to the folder containing the electronic materials for this book, subfolder \Apps, and open the document called Example Sales Analysis.qvw.
3. Search for “jacket” in the Product field.
a. Click on the caption (title) of the Product list box and begin typing jacket (the string is not case-sensitive). You can also click on the magnifying glass in the caption area of the Product list box
b. Click or Ctrl+click on individual products or press Enter to select all of the products returned in the search. Notice that the contents of the Current Selections box display the filters that are applied.
c. Right-click on the Product list box and select Clear (or click the Eraser icon next to the magnifying glass).
4. Limit the results for “jacket” by using Associative Search.
a. Click on the caption of the Product list box and start typing jacket.
b. Click the chevron (>>) in the right corner of the search box to display associated results.
c. Click on Dressy Jacket in the associated results area (see Figure 2-8) and press Enter. Notice that this did not explicitly select Dressy Jacket in the Style field, but instead limited the results in the Product field to those that also have the Style attribute “Dressy Jacket.”
Figure 2-8: Direct and associated search results
5. Based on QlikView’s green-white-gray display rules, what can you learn about the Season availability of the Dressy Jacket products? Which states do not have customers with Dressy Jacket sales?
While this exercise described the common text search feature, there are several other search features available, including numeric search, fuzzy search, and an advanced search dialog. For more information on these features, open Help ⇒ Contents from the menu and type search on the Index tab.
A Front End with No Queries
Using QlikView’s built-in ETL features, data from source systems are modeled, transformed, and loaded into memory. The resulting set of data, in memory, is the source of data for the front-end objects.
Qlik’s associative architecture maintains the relationships among all data points in memory, in real time. After each selection that a user makes, the associations in the data model are updated. What does this mean? It means that the front-end objects do no not require SQL-like queries to define the object. In traditional BI systems, a data query must be written for each chart to properly fetch data from the cube. In other words, the developer must define, with SQL code, how the data is related each time a chart is created. This makes it almost impossible for non-technical users to design their own applications. In QlikView, the difficult queries are written once, in the ETL layer. The resulting data set is then available to the front end with all of the associations intact. With the data loaded into memory, charts do not require supporting queries – they only need to be configured with a dimension and a measure. With minimal training, non-technical users can create their own dashboard objects without knowing how to write SQL queries.
Right-Sized Analytics
With several deployment options, QlikView offers a right-sized solution for any analytics or data discovery project. The desktop QlikView client allows you to quickly load data and create visualizations, all from your personal computer. Anyone who’s ever used Excel to extract data from an external source can easily learn to do the same in QlikView. Analysts can use QlikView to build their own applications to answer ad hoc business questions or create compelling visuals to use in presentations. Try doing that with traditional BI platforms!
On the other end of the scale, QlikView’s server platform provides for sharing QlikView applications among teams, or thousands of users within a global organization. With the option of clustering QlikView servers, users can have highly reliable access to applications in a distributed enterprise environment.
Qlik Sense Overview
Introduced in mid-2014,