How to customize QV in Dotnet

[#1]

Hello All,

Thanks for your previous replies,

We have a new task integrating QV with Dotnet.

Can anyone briefly explain how we can do this as i have no clue about this.

Thanks in advance

Charan.

[#2]

Both "customizing QV" and "Dotnet" are too broad topics to give you a precise answer, I can think of several meanings:

• Extending functionalities of QlikView desktop -> embed the QlikOCX component in a .Net application (or any Windows application) to interact with QlikView objects and add custom behavior on top of it. An example of such an application is GeoQlik.
• Importing QlikView objects in a web site -> use the QlikView workbench to interact with a QlikView server document in an ASP.Net application, allowing to do mashups and cleanly integrate QlikView to your website. An example was desirabelles website but it does not seem to be still online.
• Designing new chart objects -> implement a QlikView extension that will render data in its own way. Though it does not have to be anything .Net you can use any technology embeddable in a web browser, so Silverlight, XBAP or even a .Net ActiveX control could be used.

[swuehl]

Hi Jérémy,

I know this is quite an old thread, but I haven't found something more up-to-date, so I hope you can help me out:

A customer wants to integrate QV in one of his server applications (which is a WPF Browser Application using XBAP on .NET 4.5), so as far as I understand, it's a rich client internet application (communicating to its server using several web services).

The integrated QV component should talk to the QV server, essentially silently opening an application, displaying some QV list boxes in the application and allowing to trigger a data export (to a file (on server or remote) ).

The customer had the idea to use QV OCX component to integrate into his WPF application.

Honestly, I've never done that before and never heard of this before (I think today's usual way to integrate QV would be accessing the QV JS API). Well, I know the IE plugin and I can imagine how to create an 'old-style' windows desktop application using the OCX component and access the QV server in principle, but I am unsure about the XBAP part.

So, here are my questions:

1) Is this scenario feasible at all?

2) If yes, has this scenario major advantages / disadvantages over the scenario using the QV Javascript API / Workbench, maybe using extensions for talking back to the calling server?

3) Using the OCX component, what about licensing and authentication?

Hope you can answer at least parts of my questions or send me a link to other areas of interest.

Regards,

Stefan

[#4]

Hi Stefan,

1) WPF applications can embed OCX components so i guess XBAP should too.

2) Though embedding the QV OCX into a desktop application and implementing an extension aims to integrate software with qlikview, they are not at all the same thing. An extension is a way to display data of a qlikview object in a custom way. At the core, it is only a javascript function that will get called whenever your extension needs to be updated. You can do what you want with your extension data in this function, but you won't be able to do a lot (for example: the js api does not allow to evaluate an expression, to list the fields of a document, to create a variable...). Moreover, the js api is not mature enough for a complex extension: there are a lot of bugs, the documentation is a joke, and you'll find yourself constantly struggling to achieve anything beyond simple data visualization. Interaction with qlikview through the API is minimal.

On the other hand, you'll have a lot more control about what you can do using the OCX (basically anything you can do from a macro can be  done with the OCX), the documentation is a lot more complete (even if the official "documentation as a qvw" is a nightmare to view). But it will also restrain your software to only run on windows computers, while full javascript extension can be executed in every browser. You will also have to deploy your software to your users, with executable files and all that stuff that can be restricted in some environments.

3) Licensing and authentication is completely transparent: the OCX will use whatever qlikview license is installed on your computer (it can be a qv desktop license, a license leased from a server or even no license at all, in which case you will have the same limitations as in the personal edition). Opening a document on a server from the OCX will prompt the same authentication dialog as the desktop client.

One last thing: the OCX cannot use webview, and extensions only work in webview.

I hope it answers your questions.

[swuehl]

Yes, you do and thank you very much for the prompt response.

If you post to my similar thread here, I can also give you some credits.

It is possible to easily integrate the Windows UI controls for QV (like in the IE plugin), e.g. for list boxes and tables, into a Windows application using OCX component?

Where are you located? Do you consult in that domain?