Today PacktPub published a new version of Miguel García’s and my 2012 book, QlikView 11 for Developers. Now released under the version-agnostic title QlikView for Developers, the book can be used for QlikView 11, 11.2, 12 and 12.1. (and given how little love Qlik has shown QlikView recently, probably every upcoming version, if any, after this)
If you own the previous version of the book, and are still on QlikView, you may be wondering “Do I need to get this updated version?“. The answer to that question is “Unless you are a book collector, probably not“.
There are some things about the previous edition of the book that irk me. There are also many things that I have learned since 2012 and would do differently nowadays. Besides the irks, none of these things are in the updated version.
QlikView is a product in decline, with even its vendor ghosting the product in favor of Qlik Sense. Although I would’ve loved to do a full revision, I couldn’t justify the significant effort that this would cost. Miguel and I corrected the reader-submitted errata, added a chapter on what’s new in QlikView 12 and described some of the new data sources that are available to QlikView. Other than that, the book is unchanged. Much like QlikView 12, it is still solid, but there really isn’t anything new there.
“So why did you release an updated version in the first place?” When QlikView 11 for Developers was published in 2012, it did very well, wildly exceeding my own expectation of maybe selling a few hundred copies. Our publisher (PacktPub) noticed this as well. I assume their reasoning went something along the lines of “Do you know what makes us more money than 1 book on QlikView? 100 books on QlikView!“, as they’ve been steadily churning out books on QlikView since.
When we were approached for an update, it was very clear that they were going to go ahead with it, with or without us. If we didn’t update it, they would get someone else to do it. Our names would still be included on the cover though. Given PacktPub’s sometimes casual standards for considering authors, I decided it was better if I still was involved.
“OK, but I am new to QlikView, is this updated version right for me?” Yes, even though not much has changed since the previous edition, the book is still a solid introductory text on QlikView. It may be worth noting though that the previous version is equally solid, and is slightly cheaper (neither book has the words Don’t Panic inscribed on the cover though).
TL;DR: New version of QlikView for Developers now available. If you already have the old one, you don’t need this. Still a good book if you are new to QlikView, but so is the old version and it is slightly cheaper.