For an XML document to be valid it needs a Document Type Declaration (DTD). In it's simplest form this looks like;
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE root>
<root>
something here
</root>
QlikView 11 and 11.2 was fine reading such an XML document. As of QlikView 12 and also in Qlik Sense this generates an error on the second row (the DTD)!
Reply from R&D through support is that it is working as expected!?! Their solution is to remove the DTD before reading the file in QlikView.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<root>
something here
</root>
But then it is no longer a valid XML document!
According to W3C an XML document must have a Document Type Declaration to be valid.
Without the DTD it might be well formed (readable with matching tags) but can never be valid.
Many XML-documents in circulation are missing the DTD and thus are well formed but not valid.
Conclusion, Qlik no longer supports valid XML! R&D claims it to be for security reasons. Has to be when using external DTD-file reference
but then it could read the XML document and ignore the DTD.
Claiming XML support but refusing to read any valid XML document is a contradiction.
In Qlik View and Qlik Sense it appears that you cannot load XML files with Document Type Definition (DTD) content by default To verify if your XML file contain DTD information, you can simply open it (or save it on your disk if it's from a URL) and check usually the line 2. You should see something looking like:
The purpose of a Document Type Definition (DTD) is to define the legal building blocks of an XML document. It defines the document structure with a list of legal elements. This behavior is working as designed as by default we dont load xml files with a DTD because they can be used in denial of Service attacks. This security feature was not available in the previous version of QlikView for instance (11.20)
Resolution
If you want to load XML file with DTD content you will need to disable the setting ProhibitDTD.For Qlik Sense
Stop the Qlik Sense Engine service
Go to C:\Programdata\Qlik\Sense\Engine and open the file settings.ini (Make sure you have a backup of this file before doing any changes)
Add the following content:
[Settings 7] ProhibitDTD=0
Save the file and start the Qlik Sense Engine serviceFor Qlik Sense
For QlikView
Stop the QlikView Server service
Go to C:\Programdata\QlikTech\QlikViewServer and open the file settings.ini (Make sure you have a backup of this file before doing any changes)
Add the following content:
[Settings 7] ProhibitDTD=0
Save the file and start the Qlik Sense Engine service
A workaround could be to load the XML file as fixed record file format and to not load the line with DTD content (usually the first 2 lines) by adding a header. You can then store the result in another XML file and load it normally in Qlik. The script would look like this (Note: For Qlik Sense you will need to use library instead of the path directly)
Clean_XML: // Load content of the XML as Fixed Record file format and skip the first two lines LOAD [@1:n] FROM [Path_or_URL_to_the_XML] (fix, codepage is 1252, embedded labels, header is 2 lines); //Store the result in another XML STORE Clean_XML INTO "C:\temp\temp_xml.xml" (txt); DROP TABLE Clean_XML; // Start of [temp_xml.xml] LOAD statements Id: LOAD Field1, Field2 FROM (XmlSimple);
