Category Archives: Script

QlikView blog round-up: If-statements, inline tables & EDX

DecisionsTime to dust off a posting category that hasn’t been getting as much love as it should have; the QlikView blog round-up. Today I have for you three blog posts that I read recently and found very interesting:

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Merging tables: the JOIN prefix

Merging tables: the JOIN prefixThis is the second post in a series on merging tables in QlikView. In the previous post I wrote about appending rows to tables by using the CONCATENATE prefix, this time I will show you how to add  columns to a previously loaded table by using the JOIN prefix. read more »

Hands-on with QlikView Script Generator

A marble track of data!I have a confession to make. As someone who comes from a background of visual ETL tools (such as SAP BO Data Integrator and Informatica PowerCenter) loading data into QlikView via scripts has always struck me as somewhat old-fashioned.

Don’t get me wrong. I can very much appreciate a good QlikView script. It is just that whenever I hear someone say that QlikView does not need a visual way to load data and that script is fine it reminds me of the “veteran” DBA’s I’ve met during my work as a BI Consultant. If you have worked in BI/data warehousing for any length of time you probably know the type, lots of facial hair, heavy smoker, followed his last training in 1986 and, most importantly, he is absolutely adamant that PL/SQL is the only right way to do ETL. Graphical tools are for kids and amateurs!

I do not agree with that statement, so you can imagine that I was pleasantly surprised when I read the announcement for QlikView Script Generator (QsGen) this week. QsGen promises, amongst other things:

  • Visually design complex scripts to load your data
  • No more need of scripting skills
  • 500% faster design

Interested to see if I really would not need any scripting skills to build fantastic “marble tracks” of data I decided to download the trial version and test it with QlikView 10 SR1.

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Merging tables: concatenation

Merging tables using the concatenate and join prefixesOne of the subjects I often see new QlikView developers struggle with, especially those without prior database experience, is merging data from different tables. In this series of two posts I will explain how to use the CONCATENATE and JOIN prefixes to bring together data from multiple tables.

Simply put, the CONCATENATE prefix lets you add rows to a previously loaded table, while the JOIN prefix lets you add columns to a previously loaded table.

Read on for the first post, which covers the concatenation of tables in more detail. read more »

Prebuilt QlikView Script for Mozilla’s Open Data Visualization Contest

Mozilla Test PilotA few days ago I became aware of the Mozilla Open Data Visualization Contest that is being organized by Mozilla Labs and the Mozilla Metrics Team. The goal of this contest is to creatively visualize answers to the question “How do people use Firefox?”. For example by creating visualizations that investigate interesting usage patterns, reveal interesting user behavior, or explore browser performance.

I figured this would be a nice challenge, so I decided to download the data and load it into QlikView. Since I am always curious to see what other people can do with QlikView (it can be very educational) I have shared my load script and data cloud here, so that other developers interested in joining the competition can get a running start. read more »

Regular expressions in the load script

Regular expressions (or “regex”) are a developer’s best friend, they offer an extremely powerful way to search for or replace patterns in strings of text.

This post assumes that you already know how what regular expressions are and how to construct them. If this is not the case, then you may want to read up a little bit here before proceeding. Trust me, if you regularly have to deal with validating and cleaning input data then regular expressions are well worth your time.

Data validation and transformation using regular expressions, download the example application

Unfortunately, QlikView does not (yet*) natively support regex, however, there is a way to use regular expressions in your QlikView load script: VBScript. read more »

Deleting script variables

This post was inspired by a gentleman I met at a QlikTech Partner meeting who was adamant that a script variable, once created, cannot be deleted. Of course this can be done, and here’s how. read more »