Extranet Server - Pros / Cons / Best practices?

[swuehl]

Dear all,

I've  searched the forum for a while but couldn't really find much information about the extranet server. Does anybody have some experiences with this kind of QV server? At best, I would be interested in somekind of best practice regarding data source access and internal / external user access configuration.

I understood so far that the extranet server could be run stand alone or in combination with an internal EE / SBE server. The extranet server will be located in the DMZ and is capable of only holding session or usage CALS. It is said the extranet server is based upon the EE server, but will only support up to 3 documents. I am not sure what "bases upon" is saying in this context, or what the exact limitations are.

And, maybe more confusing, the pricing guidelines further say:

"There will be a choice to use the AJAX client or a customized AJAX client via QlikView Workbench. QlikView Workbench is included in the Extranet Server"

So there is no AJAX client support out of the box? The extranet server brochure available for download implies that there is support, but I am not sure.

I assume one doesn't want to run the scripts in the DMZ, opening the firewall for data source access. So a standard setting would probably include a second EE or SBE server in the intranet which is doing the back end part and then the applications will be put on to the extranet server? Or does anybody have a  different approach here?

Somebody told me that also the Publisher is needed  for communication between extranet and intranet QV server. Not sure why, though. Maybe he was just referring to the extranet server brochure, where an image may imply that. I usually regard these images more as simplifying marketing than correct technical information, but again, not sure.

Are there any major CONs regarding using an extranet server in combination with an internal SBE? Or is there an absolutely convincing PRO for using a extranet server in combination with an internal EE?

The limitation of 3 documents seems pretty hard to me, does anybode have some experiences here? I assume the license management would probably not allow to share user licenses across multiple extranet servers (which are needed for more than 3 documents), right?

I appreciate any input, also with regard to allowing access to QV for external customers / partners in general.

Best regards,

Stefan

[kdmarkee]

I know this post is a bit old, but I stumbled across this while researching QES data and I wanted to add a comment describing a "con" of QES as it pertains to collaboration.  At this time if using QlikView 12 and NPrinting 17 with On Demand, we recently (early Oct 2017) uncovered and now have a case/bug open with Qlik regarding the fact that On Demand will not work in the QES environment, and here’s why. Behind the scenes, the On Demand control generates bookmarks so NPrinting knows what data to populate the report with but that bookmark cannot be accessed/used by NPrinting because QES doesn’t offer object collaboration.  Without that collaboration functionality, On Demand reports fail.  We are still waiting to hear from Qlik on their resolution to this bug, which we hope is soon as it is a bit disappointing that we paid for NPrinting but don’t have the full feature set since On Demand is basically broken, and for us is half the reason we got NPrinting in the first place.

[kdmarkee]

Just providing an update regarding using On Demand with an extranet server/Access Point.  At this time, the answer to the issue is making sure that the NP connection is set up to use "Connection requires authentication" where the "Identity" is your NPrinting service account user.  I've attached an image.