QlikSense Desktop vs QlikSense Server vs Mix

[mikael_cleuziou]

Hello,

When your team is working on QlikSense Desktop, QDF interest is huge!

What do you think is the team is developing on QlikSense Server?

What do you think if the team is mixing QlikSense Desktop and QlikSense Server Development?

Thanks!

Mikael

[Rodj]

The QDF works just as well for Qlik Sense server as it does for teams using Qlik Sense desktop. With Qlik Sense server you will need to consider how you structure your environments, streams and security model and how you intend to utilise these in your development lifecycle, however this is definitely a much better platform for multi-team or larger environments. 

I understand opinions may be devided, but I've always preferred to develop in the server environment. Over the years that Qlik Sense has existed it has generally been the better performing and more stable environment to use, even on a local desktop instance (IMHO).

[lucasmagalhaes]

Hi @Rodj 

Could share a little more about using qdf in qlik Sense server? As i know, the qdf works with single Lib or root lib. So you have to point the lib to a specific repository. How do you share the same repository with your team and doesnt have any conflict on that? Or each developer has your own lib and repository? Also, how do you scale the server resources  to handle a couple of developers processing things? The server will stuck.

I see a lot of others tecnologies that scale great using local environment instead of servers. In a local environment you have a dedicated resources, less complexity to handle security, more reliable environment because you scale out.

I think the best scenario is to use Qlik Sense Server installed locally, but im not sure about How qlik will charge for license on that.

[Rodj]

Really you can have as many or as few data connections (I'm assuming that's what you mean by Lib) as you like. A data connection is just an access controlled means of accessing a particular data source. For access to the QDF directory you are dependent on Windows access control lists  to determine who has read/update/execute within the directory structure, so whether you have a single data connection or one per user depends on your network security policies. In more secure environments I've experienced each developer having their own data connection to the QDF in development, but then controlled migration to higher environments that have a single connnection (developers don't have rights in the higher environments).

I don't understand your concerns about scalability. I've worked in environments with moderate to large  data volumes and hundreds of users on a single Qlik Sense server. Qlik Sense scales up in a linear fashion and out easily as well. I've worked with wide data sets of hundreds of millions of rows with multiple developers on a single commodity type server. Take a look around community at some of the scalability guidelines if you want to get a more specific idea, but I think the benefits of working in a single server environment for multiple developers make it a far superior scenario to having separate individual servers. That's certainly not how Qlik Sense was designed to work.