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  Design

  Ready, Set, Go with QlikView SAP Netweaver® Connector

  Since we introduced the first version of the QlikView SAP connector 6 years ago, many of the QlikView customers leveraged the power of QlikView with t... Show More

  Since we introduced the first version of the QlikView SAP connector 6 years ago, many of the QlikView customers leveraged the power of QlikView with the SAP data. Through QlikView’s unique, in-memory associative technology, they are able to make SAP based business decisions with the speed of the business.

  

  The key enabler of the solution is the certified QlikView SAP Netweaver® Connector, which can extract data from SAP® R/3®, mySAP™, SAP BW, and BEX queries into QlikView. The extracted data  can  be combined with non-SAP data in one QlikView application providing a 360 degree view of the business.

  Let’s take a look at a business case and understand how the QlikView SAP Netweaver® Connector would help. Assume a company has various SAP Netweaver data stores and its users would like to do sales analysis across their business.  With SAP Netweaver® Connector they can connect and extract data from;

  • SAP BW/BI Business Explorer Query for sales information
  • SAP Data Store Object (DSO) for additional order values and shipping weights
  • An SAP Query to gain insight into sales organization detail metrics
  • An SAP R/3 Table so they can integrate the company details into Google maps
  • An SAP Extractor for customer items
  • An SAP BAPI for business area lookups
  • An SAP Report for customer payments

  They can then create visual and flexible analysis with this data in one single QlikView application which  can also integrate data from external non-SAP data sources.

  QlikView provides pre-packaged QlikStart templates for SAP R/3 as well as QlikView SAP data dictionary and QlikView script builder applications. These apps would give a good head start for IT by delivering the background database information of how tables within SAP interact. It would also enable the business users to quickly realize their own data in ways they may not have envisioned before.

  

  Last month we introduced a new version of the QlikView SAP Netweaver® Connector (SAP Netweaver version 5.7) with even more capabilities. If you would like to have a jump start to do Business Discovery with your SAP data, you can download the QlikStart templates from QlikCommunity.

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  By elif-tutuk 2012-07-16 / 08:08 AM

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  Design

  Colour

  Are you colourblind? Do you actually know if you’re colourblind?  On the 3 occasions I have presented on this topic I have had a two male attendees ad... Show More

  Are you colourblind? Do you actually know if you’re colourblind?  On the 3 occasions I have presented on this topic I have had a two male attendees admit to not knowing….. (until now...) that they were colourblind to some degree.

  It is estimated that approximately 8% of men and 0.5% of women are colourblind. This large difference in probability is due to the fact that the genes that produce photopigments are carried on the X chromosome; if some of these genes are missing or damaged, color blindness will be expressed in males with a higher probability than in females because males only have one X chromosome, whereas women have two!
  (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_blindness)

  The most common way to determine level of colourblindness is to take an Ishihara test. The test consists of a number of plates that contain patterns of different coloured/shaded dots. These dots form to show numbers and shapes that you can…. or in the case of colour blind people…. can’t see.

  Can you see a number in this plate…… I can’t…. I am actually colourblind, which is quite ironic considering I work with QlikView visualisations every day. A person with “normal” vision should see the number 6, colourblind people will see nothing.

  

  You can take the tests online on a number of websites :

  http://www.tedmontgomery.com/the_eye/colortst/colortst.html

  http://colorvisiontesting.com/ishihara.htm

  http://www.colour-blindness.com/colour-blindness-tests/ishihara-colour-test-plates/

  One great example I found is the image below. I cannot see any difference between the two images due to me being Red-Green colourblind. People in the office who have perfect vision could see a massive difference in the colours.…

  

  (Source: http://facweb.cs.depaul.edu/sgrais/colorvisiondefi.htm)

  I often find that colour and the use of colour is something that is decided upon without much thought, hence me writing this. We have to be very careful when we decide on the colours we use in our charts and dashboards. In your QlikView objects, really think carefully about colours and the impact your choices will have on your users.  Ensure you use colour blind friendly palettes, and avoid using colours that are “close” together in tone, next to each other in charts such as scatter and bar charts.

  There are a number of resources on the web to help you choose friendly colour palettes..

  http://jiminy.medialab.sciences-po.fr/tools/palettes/

  http://colorbrewer2.org/

  So, choose your colours wisely, try not to use colours that are “close” together. Utilise the web resources to help determine your palette. If, like me, you are colour blind then these resources are a massive help!

  Remember the number…. 8% of males are colourblind…this is a big number. This 8% could be the key decision makes or indeed the developers.

  Wherever possible, colour should purvey meaning, not just used because it looks nice!

  See more about this topic in this techincal brief Colour
  

  ABY

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  By N/A 2012-07-12 / 06:36 PM

  2 1 9728
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  Design

  An Inside Look at Building QlikView Extensions

  Have you ever wondered what it takes to create QlikView extensions? Here’s someone who knows: Brian Munz, QlikView extensions “imagineer,” as I think ... Show More

  Have you ever wondered what it takes to create QlikView extensions? Here’s someone who knows: Brian Munz, QlikView extensions “imagineer,” as I think of him. His official title is web technology lead on the demo and best practices team. Brian was the lead developer for the current version of demo.qlik.com and the version of AccessPoint that ships with QlikView Server in QlikView 11.

  

  Since QlikView 10 (released October, 2010) QlikView has enabled customers and partners to create extensions; web developers can bring custom and third-party data functionality or visualizations into QlikView, where they become fully interactive just like native capabilities. “Some of the cooler extensions I’ve seen,” said Brian, “are very powerful in terms of utility. It’s not solely about custom visualizations. You can use extensions to connect on the back end to other products (like Google Analytics) or add a Twitter feed or button, or detect browsers and devices . . . those kinds of things.” Brian has built mapping extensions, which plot regions on map (colors and shades them) based on data points, using Google Maps and open source mapping tools. He also created a geolocation extension, which enables the app to find the user’s current location (check it out here).

  I asked Brian what it takes to build QlikView extensions and here’s the way he put it: “A lot of work is around answering the question, ‘What am I trying to show?’ Once you figure that out, it’s about connecting to the data. Web developers often deal with SQL and MySQL — with databases with rows and columns. With a QlikView extension, the data comes into the extension the same way. Once you get the syntax right for pulling the data out of the source system, you say, ‘Oh, I know how to do this. I've done it a million times before.’ You then have to decide how the extension should communicate back to QlikView. A web developer who has worked with Ajax or JavaScript APIs can learn to do this without too much headache.”

  To create extensions, you need some level of JavaScript coding proficiency. To create a fairly simple extension, you could search for code snippets and paste them together. If you want to do something more complicated, you need heavy-duty JavaScript coding skills. It also helps to have a general level of comfort with other Web technologies like CSS and HTML.

  How long it takes to build a typical extension object? “There really isn't ‘typical,’” Brian said. “It depends what the extension object is. If it's enormously complicated it could take months. If it’s simple, like a marquee that scrolls across the top of the screen, showing KPIs, that could be done in an hour. Creating an extension that’s a map that has different regions of the country showing up in different colors takes longer, compared to just integrating with an existing JavaScript library.” Building QlikView extensions can take as little or long as any web project.

  “The beauty of it,” Brian said, “is in the combination. Web technology is extremely powerful, and so is QlikView. Having them work together seamlessly increases the total full power of QlikView.”

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  By N/A 2012-05-21 / 07:01 AM

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  Design

  Let the User Select

  QlikView is about empowering the user. Allowing a user to freely choose what to look at and how to look at it is one of the cornerstones of Business D... Show More

  QlikView is about empowering the user. Allowing a user to freely choose what to look at and how to look at it is one of the cornerstones of Business Discovery. Another is about simplicity – which often translates into removing unnecessary technical obstacles so that the user can focus on the data and the information that lies hidden in it. This often leads to a situation where you have two different user roles: an application developer and a business user, where the application developer takes care of the data modeling aspects of the analysis and the user interacts with the data, asks questions and finds new areas of exploration.

   

  In such a situation it is important that the developer treads carefully – he or she must remove technical obstacles without limiting the user. However, in an effort to simplify, application developers sometimes complicate things without realizing it. Let me give you a couple of examples.

   

  

   

  Macros and Actions are features that unfortunately sometimes are used to “help” the user make the right selection. I have often seen developers create buttons that make selections and activate other sheets, or triggers that clear selections and make new selections when you leave a sheet. Such constructs are confusing for the user, who doesn’t understand why these new selections happen. Macros and Actions often obscure the QlikView logic and prevent the user from learning how to interact with data on their own.

   

  Another area where the power to select can be taken away from the user is when Set Analysis is used. In set analysis, the developer can define a formula with an arbitrary selection that overrides the one made by the user. Often the new selection is based on the user selection. Set analysis is necessary for calculations that extend outside the user-made selection, e.g., if the user wants to make a year-to-date calculation for the time up to the selected month. Properly used, it is an extremely powerful tool that enhances the user's ability to find information in data. But I have seen cases where set analysis instead replaced the user's selection and limited the his ability to interact with data. To hard code the selection inside a formula is in some cases disrespecting the user’s intelligence!

   

  My view is that navigation – choosing a sheet, activating sheet objects, expanding branches in pivot tables, and, most importantly, making selections – should be left to the user. Constructions that “help” the user in this area usually have the opposite effect. Instead of helping the user, they often complicate the interaction with data and confuse the user.

   

  I am convinced that macros, actions and set analysis sometimes must be used, but these features should be used with caution. They should never be used for things that the user can do better. We live in an age of empowerment, and users want to be free to explore data in their own way and on their own.

   

  QlikView should allow them to do just that.

   

  HIC

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  By hic 2012-06-26 / 07:00 AM

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