Summary: I demonstrate how outer sets in Qlik expressions can be used to extend the reusability of Master Measures.

The new outer sets feature in Qlik brings new opportunities for Master Measure reuse in Qlik Sense and QlikView. See this post by Henric Cronström for an explanation of the new feature.

Without outer sets if we wanted to inject set analysis into a measure, we had to copy the expression text and edit. Consequently we are no longer linked to the master item and have lost the maintenance and quality benefits of being linked.

Let’s look at an example where outer sets can improve reusability. In our sample scenario, the business rule for “Sales” is sales receipts minus returns and excluding employee purchases. Our Sales master measure might look like this:

Note that we had to repeat the same set inside each aggregation. We can simplify the expression by using outer set syntax and defining the set once.

This does nothing for reusability, but I believe it improves maintainability. The outer parentheses are not strictly necessary in this case, but they do make it clearer that the set applies to the entire expression.

Continuing on we define a COGS measure:

Note that we could have used the outer set syntax, but I don’t see any advantage to that here.

With the ability to use Measure names in expressions, available in Feb 21 release, let’s define a Margin measure.

Now we can drag the Sales and Margin measure into a KPI.

Now we want to do Sales and Margin for the current year only. Our data requires that we inject a new set. This is where outer sets really shine. The Current Year Sales measure using an outer set:

The Current Year Margin measure:

Note that we have maintained our linkage to the Sales and Margin master measures!

In review, here are all five Measures taking advantage of the outer sets syntax.

I’m happy to see outer sets available in the product. I look forward to the day when sets may be master items!

-Rob

QViewer, the ubiquitous QVD file viewer,  has received a major update. In addition to the fast and beautiful QVD viewing and filtering you are used to, V4 introduces “Folder View”. Folder View allows you to work with folders and subfolders of QVDs, viewing details and opening QVDs from the list.

Here’s what the new Folder View looks like:

 

You have a rich set of options for filtering, sorting and launching actions like viewing or compare.  Want to identify the differences between two QVDs?  Take a look at the  compare function:

This short video gives an overview of some of the Folder View features and capabilities.

Download QViewer V4 here.

And of course you still have fast viewing and filtering within a QVD in the File View:

 

QViewer is free to use with limits — 100k rows per QVD and 50 QVDs per Folder.  Purchase a low cost license to remove the limits and support my work.

Want to explore all the features of QViewer? Visit the help site.

If you have any feedback or enhancement suggestions., visit the EasyQlik Community site.

Happy Viewing!

-Rob

Some people wish to run QS Document Analyzer (QSDA) on the Qlik Sense Enterprise server rather than Qlik Sense Desktop.  While the current installer only supports desktop, you can manually install to the server.

QSDA installs three components; a connector, an application (qvf) and an extension.

Install the latest QSDA on a desktop machine to unpack the components.  You don’t even need QS Desktop installed.  Take note of the folders where the components were installed.

Using the QMC,  upload the qvf application to the server.  Zip up the qsda-ribbon extension folder and upload as an extension through the QMC.

Copy the QsAppMetadataConnector folder from the install folder to this folder on the server:

C:\Program Files\Common Files\Qlik\Custom Data

If you are running a multi-node cluster, the connector must be installed on the central and rim nodes.

That’s it!

 

I’m pleased to announce that I’m joining forces with the team at websy.io!  I look forward to bringing the websy training  offerings to locations in the US as an Instructor and event organizer.

I’m also excited about the opportunities to bring websys’s recognized expertise to Qlik Sense Integration and Visualization projects throughout the world.

If you would like to inquire about scheduling a training at your site or would like to engage the experts at websys.io in your project, please contact us.

-Rob

 

I’m midway through Alberto Cairo’s new book “The Truthful Art” and finding it very stimulating.  It’s an interesting time to be a data scientist,  journalist or consumer of data.

“The Truthful Art” encourages us to use data truthfully and fearlessly, and provides processes and principles to do so.

This week I noted a new study published by the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS). A recent Presidential Executive Order asserts that the US is in special danger from travelers from seven particular countries. The order is controversial and is currently being challenged in the courts.

The CIS study found that 72 individuals from the “seven terror-associated countries”  were convicted in terror cases since 9/11/2001.  The study offers this number as evidence of the exceptional danger posed by immigration from the seven countries.

It seems like there may be more of story here than “72 terrorists from seven countries”. The study provided a link to the raw data used. I undertook an evaluation of the data and conclusions using some of the techniques I had just been reading about.

The date used to select cases in the study was “Conviction Date”.   A more meaningful date would be “Offense Date” Offense Date was not given,  but a “Charge Date” was available. I saw this  as a better proxy for when the offense occurred.  As shown in the table below, the number of days between Charge and Conviction can be quite substantial.  Using Conviction Date skews the offense into the wrong time period.

Days from Charge to Conviction

Median	75%	Maximum
381	840	2407

 

Now instead of looking at “72”, I “broadened” my view of the data as Cairo would suggest.  What about the other countries?  Are there slices of the data that provide insight?

When I plotted two country groups — banned and others — over time, an interesting story emerged.  There are no defendants from the banned countries in the last three years of the study. This suggests that travelers from those countries may actually pose less risk than travelers from other countries.

After 9/11, US domestic counter-terrorism efforts were greatly expanded and overhauled.   The decline shown in the chart suggests to me that the current screening procedures are effective and continually improving.

I’m going to continue my journey through “The Truthful Art“.

-Rob

We’ve got a couple of special  guest presenters lined up for the Munich Masters Summit for Qlik , 5-7 April.

Ralf Becher of TIQ Solutions GmbH, Qlik Luminary and  well known in the Qlik Community, will give a talk titled Spice your Qlik Sense app with Extensions and Widgets.  Ralf will present  use cases for extensions and showcase some of the incredible extensions he has created.

Nick Webster of Websy LTD will present  The Search for Sensey McSenseface.  Imagine building a dashboard simply by talking. Nick will demonstrate a natural language interface combined with Qlik APIs that allow a user to generate visualizations on the fly by asking questions like “show me sales for Germany”.  It’s pretty intriguing stuff.

Those special speakers are in addition to our already packed three day agenda.

I hope to see you in Munich. Can’t make Munich? Maybe you will join us  September 2017 in Boston.

Learn more about the Summit or register for Munich.

 

-Rob

Summary: QlikView OnOpen Document triggers fire after the saved opening sheet is calculated.  That sheet may have some heavy calculations that slow the user’s opening experience.

Maybe you already know this, maybe not.

I commonly use a Document OnOpen trigger to make sure that my Document opens on the correct sheet.  I do this because I can be lazy or sloppy during development and save the document with the wrong sheet open.  What ever I saved with becomes the opening sheet.  I hate to reinstall an app just because I saved on the wrong sheet.

Are there any “gotchas” with doing things this way?

I just noticed (after all these years) that even if my OnOpen trigger opens a trivial or empty sheet, my document can take a long time to open.  Why? Because the data requires a lot of decompression? No.

It’s because objects on the saved sheet are getting calculated and then the OnOpen Activate Sheet is being applied!  If my saved sheet has some heavy objects, I may wait a while for those calculations to complete before the Activate Sheet runs and only then do I see output.

This is also true if I use a “Select in Field” OnOpen trigger to reduce my set to something like the current month.  The trigger fires after opening sheet charts are calculated with the saved state — which is generally all data.

Of course I can leverage this behavior by making sure I save my document with selections that represent a small set, and then refine using an OnOpen trigger.

-Rob

In my consulting practice, I’m frequently engaged to improve the performance of one or more QlikView applications.   In addition to an improved application,  I typically deliver a report of measured improvement and what was changed to achieve the improvements.

I use the Document Analyzer tool as my tuning workbench.  I’ve developed, and made available as a free download,  a companion  “Document Analyzer Compare Tool” that automates the comparison  and reporting of different Document Analyzer runs.  You can download both tools from the QlikView Cookbook Tools section.  Let’s look at the details.

Document Analyzer v3.0 introduced an option to save analysis results to a QVD.

 

When set to “Yes” a reload of DA will create a results QVD named
DocumentAnalyzerResults_appname_YYYYMMSS_hhmmss.QVD

The results QVD qill be created in the same directory as Document Analyzer.qvw.

The “Optional Analysis Title” will be included in the QVD.  Use this label to identify the phase of your tuning or developement work such as “baseline” or “final”.

The DA Compare Tool can consume and report on these result QVDs.   To load results, open DACompareTool.qvw and enter a directory path on the “Main” sheet. Press the “Load Result QVDs” button and the directory will be scanned for result QVDs.

A summary table will show what result QVDs were loaded.  Note that each version of the DACompareTool requires results from a minumum version of Document Analyzer.  DaCompareTool v1 requires Document Analyzer v3.3 or later.  Results from versions earlier than the minumum will not be loaded but will be reported in log messages.

The “Trending” sheet will display gross performance metrics for all results loaded. You can if course filter which results appears on these charts using listboxes.

The remaining sheets are the “Compare” sheets, which compare two result sets.  The compare sheets use a naming common to “diff” programs — one result is selected as the “Left” side and another as the “Right”.  Left/Right reflects their position in the comparison charts.

On any compare sheet use, the “Select Analysis” button to select two analyses.

Close the Select Analysis dialog by clicking the X in the upper right of the dialog. This will lock your Left/Right selections.

Throughout the UI,  data associcated with “Left” will be light green and “Right” will be light blue.

Now that two results have been selected, various comparisons are available.  Items associated with only one side will be highlighted in the associated color. You can compare and filter

Object Calculation times:

Expression contents:

Script Tabs and Lines:

Table Names and Sizes:

The orange color indicates that both side contain the named table, but with a different row count.

I’ve also included a “Server RAM” sheet that can be helpful in computing the RAM required for a set of QVWs.  You will still need to add in estimated cache requirements, but it’s a good starting point.

“Concurrent User Sessions” is an input field allowing you to model an estimated number of concurrent users for each document.

DACompareTool looks best if the Open Sans font is installed.  If Open Sans is not installed, you’ll see a warning on the “Introduction Sheet”.   It will still work without Open Sans, just not as pretty You can download Open Sans from google fonts.

If you do  performance tuning, I hope you find the DACompareTool useful.  Let me know in comments here or on this site’s contact form if you have suggestions or questions.

I’ll be diving deeper into Document Analyzer and the Compare Tool at my Feb 2 “Document Performance Tuning” class and in an expanded Performance Tuning session with Oleg Troyansky at the 2017 Masters Summit for Qlik.  I hope to meet you at either or both for a deep dive into the principles and practice of Qlik performance.

-Rob

 

I’m excited to announce our first 2017 Masters Summit for Qlik event in Munich Germany on 5-7 April 2017.

 

Designed for Qlik Developers who have basic skills and experience,  the Summit presents three days of intense hands-on sessions in topics such as Advanced Scripting, Data Modeling, Advanced Aggregation and Set Analysis, and Visualization Techniques, applicable to both QlikView and Qlik Sense.

You have some experience with Qlik, have taken the beginning courses. How do you ramp up to create more success with your Qlik program? Learn from seasoned experts, authors and world class presenters Rob Wunderlich, Barry Harmsen, Oleg Troyansky and Bill Lay.

In addition to the hands-on exercises, you’ll come away with many valuable sample files and documents. You’ll also get a chance to meet and network with Qlik Developers from around the world.

Our 2017 program features an expanded Performance Tuning section and additional content specific to Qlik Sense.

In four years over 800 Qlik Developers have attended eleven Summits around the world. Their feedback is overwhelming positive. Read about their experience here.

I hope you can join us in Munich to take your Qlik skills to the next level! Read about the details of registration here.

-Rob