Summary:  Preceding load used to slow down your script. but no more. Beginning with QV Nov 2017,  preceding load has no performance penalty.

I’ve posted several times about the elegance of preceding load.  I’ve also written about how preceding load can make your script run significantly slower.  Good news! Beginning with QV release Nov 2017 (12.20) the performance penalty has been eliminated.

To demonstrate  the improvement, let me start with  some test results from QV12.10 SR8,  prior to the improvement.

Test 0, the first bar, indicates the time in seconds to perform an optimized load of  a 20 million row QVD.  Test 1, which follows, is loading the same QVD but with the addition of two new calculated  fields in the same LOAD statement.  The calculations are trivial, so the increase in elapsed time is mostly due to the loss of the optimized load.

Test 2 creates the same calculated fields using preceding load and you can see the dramatic increase in elapsed time.  Test 5 adds a “LOAD *” to the preceding load stack and again shows a large increase in duration.

Tests 3, 4 & 6 repeat the same tests using Resident as the source instead of QVD.  Once again, a significant increase in duration when preceding is used.

I’ve been running this same test suite for several years across multiple QV releases, different machines and varying datasets.  The results are generally the same.

The problem, as explained to me by Henric Cronström and confirmed by my own observations, is that the preceding load code  uses only a single processing thread.  So while tests 1 & 3 above will use multiple threads, tests 2,4,5,6 will use only a single thread.   One way to think of this is not that preceding load runs slower, but that non-preceding load runs faster.

I never did understand why Preceding-Resident ran slower than Preceding-QVD, but I no longer care!

Here I add test results (in red) for QV Nov 2017 SR1 (Qv 12.20) .

You can see optimized QVD (test 0)  is about the same.  Adding calculated fields (test 1) is  slightly better between releases.

What is really significant is there is no longer any increase when using preceding load.  Further,  Resident performs faster than QVD as I would expect. (Note both tests used an SSD drive).

This is all great news as there are many cases where preceding load can help make your code more maintainable and understandable.  I hated to choose between clarity and performance.

What about Qlik Sense?   I’ve confirmed that Feb 2018 Desktop exhibits the new “no-penalty” performance.  I don’t know about previous releases.

No reason to fear preceding load!

-Rob

Summary: The Dual() function stores both string and numeric representations of a value.  “Implied Duals”  such as Dates, store only the numeric portion and apply the string mask as needed. In some circumstances such as un-optimized QVD loads, implied duals can get converted to “full duals” using storage unnecessarily.

In QlikView and Qlik Sense you can create a Dual field using the Dual() function such as:

if(ShipDate = OrderDate, Dual('Yes',1), Dual('No', 0)) as SameDayShip

Dual fields have both string and numeric representations and Qlik is smart about using the correct representation based on context.

In a listbox or filter, SameDayShip will show the string values as:

Yes
 No

We can also write expressions such as:

Sum(SameDayShip)

which will smartly and automatically use the numeric value of SameDayShip.

Internally, the values will be stored in the symbol table like this:

The numeric portion, 1 or 0 in this case, will always occupy 8 bytes. The average symbol length will be 10.5 —  (11 + 10) / 2 values. You can display the symbol length by using a tool like Document Analyzer.

What about Date() or Num() fields, which are also Dual fields?  When properly scripted, these are what I call “Implied Dual fields”. They have dual behavior, but do not occupy the full dual storage.

Dates are represented as the number of days since Dec 31, 1899.  Today’s date (March 12, 2017) number is 42806.  A properly optimized date stores only the numeric value and does not store the  string value. Instead , the format mask is stored once as an attribute of the field.

On demand, when the string representation is required (like in a listbox) the format mask is applied.  The symbol length in this case is always 8, only the numeric value.

Sometimes — such as in an un-optimized QVD load — the field is converted to what I call a “full dual” (like the “SameDayShip ” example) and both the string and numeric values are stored in the symbol table.  This can greatly increase the storage used for the symbol table.

An example of an un-optimized load that will create the “full dual” representation:

LOAD
 DateField
 FROM Dates.qvd (qvd)
 Where Year(DateField) >= 2016;

In QlikView, you can “fix” this problem by going into the Document Properties, Number pane and changing the field format from “Mixed” to to “Date” format.  QV will immediately release the string storage.

Qlik Sense does not provide a Number Format pane, so you must apply corrections in the script like this:

LOAD
 Date(Num(DateField)) as DateField
 FROM Dates.qvd (qvd)
 Where Year(DateField) >= 2016;

To be fair, this is usually not a big deal for something like Dates, which have a relatively small number of values.  It can become more significant with something like Timestamps or other numeric fields that have many unique values.

The “Recommendations” sheet of Document Analyzer identifies these “Numeric Size” opportunities and quantifies the memory savings if you were to apply a correction.

-Rob

Well that’s a wordy title isn’t it?

I’m in the midst of  writing a new QlikView Document  Optimization course to be delivered at  Q-On Training .  This work has reminded me of a not-so-obvious issue I sometimes see in  Performance Tuning engagements with customers.

You might be thinking I’m going to write today about how heavy a calculation can be as a result of the cartesian product of disconnected fields in an expression . No…that’s not what I’m thinking of.

What I’m thinking about today is the impacts of selecting  a field that is not used by any expression on the sheet. For example, a Currency listbox may be present on the sheet.  The Currency field is not connected (“Data Island”) to other tables in the model . Some, or none, of the objects on this sheet may reference that Currency field.

What happens when you click a Currency value? Everything on the sheet gets recalculated.  E v e ry t h i n g.  Whether it uses Currency or not. Why? Because the data has changed.

Since the data used in my chart has not changed, the results will be fetched from cache, right? Probably not.  Let’s look at an example:

Dimension:  Customer
Expression:  Sum(Sales)

The current selection in Currency  is “USD”.  The chart has been calculated and the results stored in cache, available for speedy retrieval if the same expression is calculated over the same set of data.

Select “EUR” in Currency. The cached result will not be used even though no change has been made in the data used by the chart. Cache evaluation considers the entire data model, not just data referenced by the object. If you now select “USD”, the previously cached result will be used.

If your application is large enough that you consider this behavior to be a problem, a leaner alternative for the Currency example is to use a variable. When a variable changes, only objects that reference the variable get recalculated. Another great alternative is to put the Currency listbox in a different Alternate State.

Let’s look at another case, the idea of a “universal listbox” that has been published by a several authors. I think it’s a very cool idea and I use it myself for data exploration. The common idea is that you let the user pick any field and then make selections in that field. This can be built using the system fields $Table and $Field.

Let’s consider the app is idle and all the sheet objects are occupying what I’ll term “relative cache slot #1” – the first cache entry for each object.  Now we’ll use the universal listbox.

1. Select a $Table value. Everything is recalculated, consuming CPU resources and the results are stored in “cache slot #2”.

2. Select a $Field value, “ProductGroup”.  Everything is recalculated, consuming CPU resources and the results are stored in “cache slot #3”.

3. Make some selections in  “ProductGroup”.  Everything is recalculated, consuming CPU resources and the results are stored in “cache slot #4”.  This result, with the new data, is what the user is interested in.

We have used three times the CPU and cache resources to achieve the end result.  A leaner alternative would be to place the universal listbox on it’s own sheet, thus avoiding extra recalculations.  You can move back and forth with buttons to make it feel like it’s integrated with each sheet.

I don’t mean to discourage the use of  these data island techniques. They can be incredibly useful to the #1 goal  — getting accurate  information to your business in a timely and cost efficient manner. However, when you are dealing a specific performance concern in larger apps this is an area you may want to examine and optimize.

-Rob

Watch the Q-On Training site or subscribe to our Q-On newsletter to be notified when the new Performance course is available. For more performance related discussions and tips, join me at the Masters Summit for QlikView Sept 23-25 NYC or 29 Sep-1 Oct Copenhagen. 

In the latest release 2.4  of QV Document Analyzer I’ve started the process of adding “Recommendations”, highlighting specific areas where potential improvement may be made to your document.

The recommendation included in this release is “Numeric field sizes”. Numeric fields that occupy more than 8 bytes of storage per value will be flagged. They will be highlighted on the Fields sheet and additional details will be provided on the Recommendation sheet.  The potential savings from “fixing” the field is also shown.

So what is this 8 byte thing? Ideally, most numeric fields (which includes timestamps) can be represented by 8 bytes of storage. In the Number format property or the script num() function you assign a formatting mask to be used for string representation.  QV stores the 8 byte number and applies the mask at display time.

Occasionally, particularly when doing an un-optimized load from QVD, the data can wind up being saved as “Mixed” which means both the numeric and string representations are stored for each value. So you may see Symbol widths of 17, 20, 24 or even greater for this field.

In larger apps with many unique numeric values, I’ve found significant memory savings by restoring these Mixed fields to a numeric format.

The usual tuning and optimizing caveat applies here. Don’t spend effort recovering a few megabytes. You have better things to do. But if you are wrestling with the megabeast app, fixing the biggest of those fields may be worth the effort.

-Rob

This is a follow on to my post “How Not to Choose an Expression” that described the performance problem sometimes experienced in large apps when choosing one of several expressions.

I received a number of questions about the scalability of my suggested solution to define multiple Expressions using the Expression Conditional property. In this post I’ll present an alternative for when you have a large number of option combinations.

Before I dive in,  an important comment about coding for performance. First, you should code for clarity and maintainability. If your document contains only a few million rows, it probably won’t matter if you use if() or an alternative technique.  I’m fond of the  Donald Knuth quote “Premature optimization is the root of all evil (or at least most of it) in programming”. The techniques presented in this post are meant to solve an identifiable performance problem. I wouldn’t bother implementing them unless I have a need.

Let’s use a scenario where calculations should reflect user selected options.

• US Dollars or Local Currency  — USD | LC
• Include VAT?  — Y|N

I’m only dealing with two options to keep my example manageable. You should be able to extend the concepts into many options.

The if method chart Expression for our choice may look like this:

if(CurrencyType='USD' AND [Include VAT?]='N'
 ,Sum(SalesAmount_USD)
,if(CurrencyType='USD' AND [Include VAT?]='Y'
 ,Sum(SalesAmount_USD + VAT_USD)
,if(CurrencyType='LC' AND [Include VAT?]='N'
 ,Sum(SalesAmount_LC)
,if(CurrencyType='LC' AND [Include VAT?]='Y'
 ,Sum(SalesAmount_LC + VAT_LC)
))))

The [CurrencyType] field controls which field we will sum() and the [Include VAT?] field controls if the associated VAT field is included in the sum(). What’s the difference between the alternatives? Only the fields listed in the sum().

Our Document contains 100M rows and we’ve identified this expression as a bottleneck. What are some alternatives to make this perform better?

In my previous post, I discussed dividing this into four expressions and making a choice using the Expression Conditional property. I won’t repeat the details of it here.  In this case, I don’t want to create multiple expressions in the charts. What is another possible technique?

Start by loading a table that reflects the choice fields and the associated sum() fields.

This is an island table that is not linked to any other tables in our model.

Create Listboxes for [CurrencyType] and [Include VAT?]. Set the “Always One Selected” property in the Listboxes.  This will force the user to make selections and at any given time only one row will be possible in our table.

We will then reference the SalesExprField in our chart using Dollar Sign Expansion (DSE). DSE is performed before the expression is evaluated. Our chart expression is now:

Sum($(=SalesExprField))

The “=” within the DSE says to evaluate this as an expression. In other words, substitute in the value of the SalesExprField and then evaluate the Sum().

Do you want to see what DSE is actually substituting? In a Straight Table, clear the Label field. The substituted expression will be visible in the column heading.

If we are not sure that “Always On Selected” is guaranteed, we should use some type of aggregation function to ensure a single SalesExprField is selected. For example, to take the first possible value:

Sum($(=FirstSortedValue(DISTINCT SalesExprField,1)))

Instead of just parameters to  the sum() function, we could have included the entire expression in our island table,  eg “Sum(SalesAmount_LC + VAT_LC)”. In that case our chart expression would be:

$(=SalesExprField)

What if want to control options via variables instead of fields? Use a Set expression in the Only() function.

Sum(
$(=only({<CurrencyType={$(vCurrencyType)},[Include VAT?]={$(vIncludeVAT)}>}SalesExprField))
)

If you’ve read this far, you are probably wondering “Is there a downloadable example”. Yes, it can be found here. Qlikview Cookbook: How to Choose an Expression.

-Rob

Want more performance tips?  Come see Oleg Troyansky’s Performance Tuning session and  additional tips  from other presenters at the “Masters Summit for Qlikvew”.

We sometimes have a  requirement to select between two or more expressions  dependant on user selections or some other condition. For example, this chart Expression.

if(vWithCommission=1
 // Calculate with Commision
 ,sum({<CommissionFlag={1}>}
     SalesAmount - SalesAmount * CommissionRate)
 // Calculate without Commission
 ,sum(SalesAmount)
 )

The  if()  will select one or the other sum() expression based on the value of the vWithCommmision variable.  Because a variable is being tested —  not a row value — only one sum() will be chosen for the entire chart.

If performance is important,  this is not a good way to implement the requirement. QlikView does not “short circuit”. Short circuit means to stop evaluating when the condition is true. QlikView will calculate both sums and then return one of those results.

Some people mistakenly believe that putting the above expression in a variable changes the behavior. This is incorrect. The if() evaluation is still done at the chart level and the performance impact remains.

A performant way to solve the requirement is to put each calculation into a separate chart Expression and use the  Conditional property to select the Expression.

An Expression with  a Conditional evaluating to False will not be calculated or displayed.

There is also the possibility of choosing the calculation in a variable, but you have to follow a few rules.

1. The variable should return the string representation of the formula. Note the single quotes in the example below.
2. The variable definition should begin with “=”. This causes the if() to be evaluated only once.
3. In the chart Expression, reference to the variable should be made with $(). eg  $(vChooseCalc)

=if(vWithCommission=1
    ,'sum({<CommissionFlag={1}>}
        SalesAmount - SalesAmount * CommissionRate)'
    ,'sum(SalesAmount)'
)

-Rob

For more performance tips, join us at the upcoming “Masters Summit for Qlikvew”  in San Francisco May 2015 where Oleg Troyansky presents an always enlightening session on Performance Tuning. Can’t make SF? Check out the other dates and locations on the website.