Hi there, I'm Barry and I'm an independent Business Intelligence Consultant based in the Netherlands. Originally from a background of 'traditional' Data Warehousing, Business Intelligence and Performance Management, for the past few years I have been specializing in QlikView and a more user-centric form of BI. I have done numerous QlikView implementations in many different roles and industries. In 2012 I co-authored the book QlikView 11 for Developers. You can follow me on Twitter at @meneerharmsen.
From April 7 – 10 it’s once again time for QlikTech’s yearly partner conference: Qonnections. Should you be fortunate enough to find yourself in the beautiful Bahama’s, we’ll sweeten the deal even more with a chance for you to win 1 of the 10 free copies of the book QlikView 11 for Developers that Mike and I will be giving away.
What’s the catch?
All we want from you is a Tweet. Be creative, tell us why you should get a free copy and don’t forget to include the hash tag #Qonnections and a link to the book’s page http://bit.ly/QV11Dev. On Monday 8th and Tuesday 9th of April, we will pick 5 winners and will announce them on this page. Important: You have to be able to pick up your book (or have someone pick it up for you) at the conference on either Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday.
Of course, should you be interested in a meet-up with one or both of us, feel free to ping us via Twitter: @garciammiguel or @meneerharmsen.
But I’m not in the Bahama’s!
No worries, we’ve thought of you as well! Our publisher has graciously agreed to provide a promo code that will give you 20% off the price of the book:
vq2peb
You can use this code at the Packt website until May 5th 2013.
No, this post isn’t about that negative co-worker or friend who’s always second-guessing your ideas and solutions, it’s about two QlikView script statements that I believe deserve a little more attention: WHEN and UNLESS. (Inspired by Steve Dark’s post on Hidden QlikView Features)
Both statements can be used as an easier, shorter version of the IF-THEN-END IF statement. For example, to set the default value for a variable, but only if it hasn’t been set already:
WHEN ‘$(Variable)’ = ” SET Variable = ‘Value’;
Or, another example, when you’re in a loop and want to add a separator to a concatenated value, unless it’s the last iteration of the loop:
UNLESS $(i) = $(ForMax) LET Variable = ‘$(Variable);’;
One thing you’ll immediately notice when you use these statements is that QlikView syntax highlighting doesn’t seem to recognize them. Don’t worry though, as the attached example application demonstrates, they do really work.
I’m proud to be one of the speakers at the Masters Summit for QlikView, which will be held at the Four Seasons in Las Vegas on April 16 – 18.
In 3 days of hands-on sessions, Rob Wunderlich, Bill Lay, Oleg Troyansky and I hope to provide you with new knowledge and skills that will take your QlikView experience to the next level. We’ll be covering topics around advanced scripting, data modeling, expressions, visualization and much more. Besides an opportunity to invest in new knowledge and skills, this is also an excellent opportunity to network and exchange new ideas with your peers.
I hope you will be able to join us there. For more information, see the conference website.
Growing up in the 80′s and 90′s, one of my favorite TV shows was the A-Team. Over-the-top, cartoonish action with huge explosions, cars flipping over in mid-air topped off with a cool theme song. And all without anyone getting seriously hurt. This was the perfect TV show for young Barry!
But I’ve grown up since, and my tastes have matured (somewhat). However, there is one thing about the A-Team which I think is still relevant today: the actual A-Team and the well-balanced blend of skills of its members. No matter what an episode’s villain (drug king-pin/shady land developer/corrupt senator/whatever) threw at them, the combined qualities of the A-Team always ensured that they came out on top.
In today’s post, I am going to take a closer look at the skills and qualities of the A-Team, and will explain how they can be translated to the role of a QlikView Consultant. (Or, alternatively, how these roles can be used to staff the perfect QlikView Competency Center.)
Calling the QlikCommunity! Help out a student with the research for his Master thesis and in return get some interesting insights into the benefits and capabilities of Mobile Business Intelligence.
Twan Peters is a graduate student at Tilburg University in The Netherlands. To earn his Master degree, he is conducting research into Mobile Business Intelligence. His research aims to measure mobile BI success by examining the net benefits and the related mobile BI capabilities. read more »
In May of last year I became aware of a new and, dare I say, revolutionary 3D gesture controller; the Leap Motion. After seeing the slick video, I knew I had to have one, how cool would it be to use this with QlikView?
Unfortunately, these units weren’t for sale yet. And to be honest, this looked like another cool gadget that gets hyped for two weeks before, for whatever reason, fading back into obscurity. Noticing Leap had a Developers Wanted page, I figured “why not” and signed up, not expecting to hear anything after that.
It’s that time of the year again where we take a look back at the past year and make plans for the new year. I hope you can look back at a successful year and have many exciting plans for the future.
For me, it’s been an intense but very fulfilling year, culminating in the release of the QlikView 11 for Developers book. I look forward to a new year filled with great opportunities and developments.
The QlikFix blog has been doing very well in the past year. 2012 brought roughly 50% more traffic than 2011 and the trend is moving upward. In this post I will share with you this year’s top 5 best read articles, and also request your input in shaping my plans for the blog in 2013.
Christmas time is coming near and I’m in a festive mood, so today I have a short post to wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
Of course, it wouldn’t be a QlikFix Christmas if I hadn’t whipped up a little visual effect in QlikView. Without further ado, here is my QlikView Christmas card to you:
But wait, there’s more! Inspired by the Christmas theme over at Matt Fryer’s QlikView Addict blog (a recommended read, by the way), I decided to create a small document extension that lets you add a little Christmas spirit to your own QlikView documents. Amaze (or annoy) your clients, co-workers and users! For example, how about adding a little snow to the golf course? read more »
Today, instead of a tip, I have a little anecdote about how QlikView helped me fix QlikView.
One project had me setting up a customized QlikView Server environment for an enterprise client. Part of the customization was ensuring that the service accounts, the ‘users’ that are used to run the QlikView services, do not require local administrator privileges.
Anyone who’s had to deal with this requirement knows that it isn’t exactly a straightforward job. Out of the box, the QlikView services will not work without local admin privileges. There is some help, but on a typical ‘hardened‘ version of Windows Server you still need to do additional troubleshooting to make things work.
After many months of hard work, today I am proud and excited to announce the upcoming release of the new QlikView book that Mike García and I wrote together:
QlikView 11 for Developers
With 500 pages of original content and an extensive collection of code samples, we believe this book contains everything new (and seasoned) QlikView developers should know in order to put QlikView 11 to productive use.
The book will be published by Packt Publishing and is scheduled for release on November 15th. If you want to secure a copy for yourself, pre-orders can be placed via this page.
Of course, writing a book is not a solo (or in our case, duo) exercise. Mike and I could not have done it without the great contributions of:
In the coming weeks, we will be giving you insights into the book and will also be giving away a few copies, so be sure to watch this space. You can get notified of new posts by entering your email address in the input box in the top right corner of this page.
Update 2012/11/20: yesterday we were informed by the publisher that both the print version and the e-book will be released on November 23rd.
Update 2012/11/29: for those that are unable to download the code bundle from the publisher’s website, you can also download it from this link: http://bit.ly/CodeBundle
From April 7 – 10 it’s once again time for QlikTech’s yearly partner conference: 
No, this post isn’t about that negative co-worker or friend who’s always second-guessing your ideas and solutions, it’s about two QlikView script statements that I believe deserve a little more attention: WHEN and UNLESS. (Inspired by Steve Dark’s post on 
Download the example application
Growing up in the 80′s and 90′s, one of my favorite TV shows was the 
In May of last year I became aware of a new and, dare I say, revolutionary 3D gesture controller; the 
It’s that time of the year again where we take a look back at the past year and make plans for the new year. I hope you can look back at a successful year and have many exciting plans for the future.
Today, instead of a tip, I have a little anecdote about how QlikView helped me fix QlikView.
After many months of hard work, today I am proud and excited to announce the upcoming release of the new QlikView book that 
