Summary: As a provider of Qlik Sense visualization extensions Vizlib promises to blend the innovation and agility of open source with the reliability of commercial software..
The pace of delivery for visualization in Qlik Sense has been disappointing to some. Thanks to rich open APIs in QS, much of the slack has been taken up by the community in the form of open source visualizations as seen on branch.qlik.com. There you can see some remarkable innovation and responsiveness to community requests.
Should you use open source visualizations? An open source extension may provide just what you need in your project. But you should consider the unsupported nature of open source and evaluate the risk and consequences of the visualization possibly failing at some point.
When I worked as a Java developer my team used the open source Eclipse IDE as our main tool. We also used a dozen or more open source plugins. As our plugin library grew, we found that testing and updating plugins between releases was taking an inordinate amount of time, sometimes making us afraid to upgrade the base Eclipse product. We turned to a vendor and purchased a bundled version of Eclipse with dozens of plugins tested, supported and verified. Problem solved.
Vizlib is a new company is promising to blend the innovation and agility of open source with the commercial support that many customers demand. Vizlib is partnering with the best extension authors to produce a library of fully supported high function visualization extensions. Check out some of what they have published so far:
- A Table object that delivers the functionality of a QlikView table and much more.
- Rich Formatting Options just like in Excel/QlikView
- Conditional show & hide of columns
- Dynamic Labels
- Minicharts & Progress Bars
- An Advanced Text Object that provides the full functionality of the classic QlikView text object (including actions!) plus additional functionalities like HTML code and icons.
To date Vizlib has released five visualizations with more on the way. Check out what’s available on the Vizlib download page. A free trial license is offered that allows you to try any of the extensions in your own installation. Take a look!
-Rob
Thanks Rob for sharing this!
I do wish Qlik would do this on their own. Im not sure, but it seems that Qlik and in particular the ‘Sense’ platform is becoming a like Microsoft/large vendor that outsource what was thought to be core functionality to third party vendors that are not supported by by the parent company?
This library is encouraging, maybe Qlik will purchase them at some point, but then we will have to pay for this Viz Library like NPrinting, so I hope they dont. Is QlikSense becoming a piece-mill platform even more so than QlikView?
Rhetorical statement, I know, but this is how feel on this topic.
Extensions I find to be buggy vs native objects so excuse my skepticism, but I hope it becomes a thing of the past. I do realize beggars cant be choosers so I will take what I can get.
Hey Brian. This is an advertised post and won’t give you much insight.
Vizlib is free for now but not for too long. The idea is that people start using it so they can charge you later. They might not charge developers or single users though.
Regarding Qlik doing this, I think we all agree on that. This is something they should have focused from the beginning.
JV
Hi Juan,
This is not an advertised post. It is my own opinion. I thought I made it clear that this was a commercial, not free, product. The website currently offers a free trial for up to 5 users to let you try before you buy, but “buy” is the idea.
Hi Juan,
Rob’s post was not solicited by Vizlib in any way – as a matter of fact we only found out ourselves from Twitter when it was posted.
Vizlib will remain free for up to five users and this will not change. For everything above 5, we offer a subscription model to provide you with commercial support on top of our library.
Thanks,
Martin
Vizlib
Good news Martin! When I said ‘it’s free for now’ I was talking about companies. I always knew you guys would offer it for free for non commercial purpose. Thanks for supporting the developers and community. Keep it up!
JV
Also companies can use our library commercially as long as they don’t exceed the 5 user limit 🙂
Thanks,
Martin
Vizlib
Hi Brian,
I think Microsoft is a good analogy. That is, Qlik is focusing on the platform (like MS does with SQL Server) and ceding the creation of the “application” (visualization) layers to third parties and developers.
I don’t see Qlik delivering functionality like this, as they could have done so easily already. I think the pace of advanced visualization features in QS is intentional.
I don’t have any inside track on Qlik’s strategy, this is just my opinion and observations.
Rob, I agree with your assessment on QS.
Additionally they must have a partnership with these vendors to allow them to come in and fill the capability gap. So revenue that Qlik would have a collected goes to them. Not sure why. Capitalism at work I guess. Frustrating for me, good for them….
Thanks for your insights.
Brian
I already am using Vizlib advanced text object with Qlik Sense and It’s just FINE; but when I downloaded the Vizlib table, it’s not showing at all.. the property panel is there, but the table is BLANK.
ps: I’m using Qlik Sense 3.2.3
Any idea?
Email support@vizlib.com with any questions or problems.
Rob,
Don’t you agree that Qlik should propose “simple objects” and “advanced objects” in the left menu when creating a chart in QS?
Simple objects will remain the same as the actual version. Advanced objets (like vizlib objects) access rights would be manageable from QMC.
Will this happen?
Thierry,
I think they already have this division with “Charts” being the out of the box stuff and “Custom Objects” being the “Advanced Stuff” . You can control Extension access per user in the QMC.
Hi Rob
I’m using this VizLib and climber extensions in current engagement. These are commercial and i love the sheet menu extension. Worth to use this on commercial license and speed up your qliksense front end development instead of going to branch and download free which doesn’t work all the times and especially when server upgrades to new version everytime.
Thanks
Satish