Category Archives: Analysis

Qlik named leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant

The 2017 Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence and Analytics Platforms has been released and Qlik is in the Leaders quadrant for the 7th consecutive year! Besides Qlik, both Tableau and Microsoft return in the Leaders quadrant, where they also were last year.

 

Comparing this edition with previous year’s Magic Quadrant, we can see that Qlik has lost around 15% on Completeness of vision, while more or less keeping the same Ability to execute. At the same time, we can see that both Tableau and Microsoft have both significantly improved their lead in these areas. I haven’t seen the actual analyst report yet so the reasons for these changes remain speculation at this time.  (will update with a link once a vendor releases it for free).

Update 2017/02/22: the full report can be found here.

 

 

Looking at the multi-year trend, we can see that Business Discovery has truly become mainstream while the previously dominant ‘Mega Vendors’ have been downgraded to the middle of the pack (look where IBM was in 2013, and where it is now). The positive exception here is Microsoft, which seems to have reinvented themselves in the past few year (Power BI!).

 

Geographical analysis with QlikMaps

QlikMaps

There are multiple mapping extensions available for geographical visualization and analysis in QlikView and Qlik Sense. Examples of commercial offerings are GeoQlik, NPGeoMap, Idevio and QlikMaps. Bitmetric (the people behind this blog 😉 ) is a QlikMaps partner, so I have been working a lot with QlikMaps recently. I have found it very powerful yet easy to work with.

QlikMaps demo

Today I want to share with you a small demo that I built. This demo shows demographic information about London mixed with a few of my holiday snapshots. The demo shows most of the common features of QlikMaps.

Want to try QlikMaps?

QlikMaps is available for both QlikView and Qlik Sense. Want to get a free trial and try it out with your own data? Then send us a request using the form below and we’ll get you hooked up!

[contact-form-7 id=”8459″ title=”Contact Form QlikMaps”]

 

What does Narratives for Qlik make of the 2016 Gartner Magic Quadrant for BI and Analytics Platforms?

Gartner Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence and Analytics Platforms

The 2016 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence and Analytics Platforms was released last February 4. This year’s edition caused quite a stir on various blogs and social media platforms as most of the ‘old-school’ vendors were dropped from the Leaders quadrant, leaving only Tableau, Microsoft and Qlik as Leaders.

Many excellent blog posts appeared in the last week, providing further commentary and thoughts on the current state of the BI and Analytics market. Rather than adding another post with my own commentary, I will take a slightly different approach.

read more »

Target lines on a bar chart using error bars

During my internship at Bitmetric one of my project goals was to build a QlikView application to benchmark logistical companies. I needed to visually compare the results of one organization with the average results of all organizations. My first try was using a combo chart with symbols, but I wasn’t happy with how that looked:

Error bars ComboChart

The dot seems to reflect an interval instead of a value. What I really wanted was to make is a chart that uses a straight line for the benchmark:

Individual target lines on a QlikView bar chartIn this blog I will show you how you can make such a chart.

read more »

Introduction to alternate states

QlikView Alternate StatesA little while ago, I was asked to change an existing QlikView Application. While scanning the application, I found that it used Alternate States. I had already heard about Alternate States, and that they could store different user selections, but didn’t have any hands-on experience yet. I decided to dig a bit deeper into the subject before continuing. I wrote down what I learned in this post

read more »

QlikView hash functions and collisions

HashFunctionI’m currently updating my materials for the upcoming Masters Summit for QlikView in Chicago, and thought I’d share a little bit with you. In my session on data modeling, I explain how you can deal with various types of Slowly Changing Dimensions in QlikView. One of the techniques I explain is using hash functions to detect changes in (historical) records. During the previous events, this always lead to two questions from the audience:

  • What exactly are hash functions and hashes?
  • And, from those who already know the answer to the first question: Aren’t you worried about hash collisions?

Today I will answer both questions and hopefully give you some insight into hash functions, their usefulness in QlikView and the risks of hash collisions.

read more »

Masters Summit for QlikView: European Edition

Masters Summit for QlikViewAfter the success of the Las Vegas edition last April, I’m excited to be once again presenting alongside Rob Wunderlich, Bill Lay and Oleg Troyansky at the European edition of the Masters Summit for QlikView.

Masters Summit for QlikView; London and BarcelonaComing to London from October 9  to 11 and to Barcelona from 14 to 16 October, the Masters Summit brings you 3 days of hands on sessions where we will discuss advanced techniques in building complex solutions with QlikView. The goal of this event is to take your QlikView skills to the next level and help you become a QlikView  master.

For the early birds, there is an attractive discount of US$ 300 (around 225 Euro’s) until August 16th, which, for example, should be enough to cover air fare from most locations within Europe. Make sure you do not miss out on this great offer and:

Register for the Masters Summit for QlikView

I hope to see you all there!

What QlikView Consultants can learn from the A-Team

The A-TeamGrowing 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.)

read more »

How QlikView helped me fix QlikView

Fixing QlikView using QlikViewToday, 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.

read more »

Announcing QlikView 11 for Developers: The Book

QlikView 11 for Developers book coverAfter 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:

Donald Farmer Foreword Blog @donalddotfarmer
Ralf Becher Technical review Blog @TIQView
Steve Dark Technical review Blog @quintelligence
Stephen Redmond Technical review Blog @stephencredmond
John Trigg Code support @qt_trigjoh
Rashmi Phadnis Acquisition editor @rashp
Joanne Fitzpatrick Acquisition editor
Sai Gamare Project coordinator @saigamare
Anugya Khurana Project coordinator
Ankita Shashi Lead Technical editor
Nitee Shetty Technical editor

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 2012/11/23: the book is now available for sale! (Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Packt)

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