Develop apps in Sense Server, Howto: track changes / version control / revert

[Allardata]

Hi,

When developing Apps in the Qlik Sense Server environment, changes are processed/stored in the Sense Database (Repository). And only the latest state of an app is stored on the server: "C:\ProgramData\Qlik\Sense\Apps" as a Binary file.

I can backup and restore this complete Repository, as described in the following document:

https://help.qlik.com/sense/en-us/online/Subsystems/ServerDeploymentConfiguration/Content/Server/Ser...

This works for scenarios in which something is terribly wrong, not loosing everything. That's good.

More common use-cases are:

• Track (major) changes for application iterations. Example: after publishing to indicate what has improved.
  
• Undo certain script changes in a single application.
• Revert to an earlier state/version of an application.

When developing offline I can easily create app version by giving it a version number, and backup the QVF files on disk.

Any best practices on how to develop Sense applications in the server environment, and have control over changes/versions?

[Allardata]

I just participated in the Qlik "Visualize Your World" Virtual Forum, and asked the same question to a large dutch consultancy firm. They do the following:

• Use the same company-wide version control, in their case from Microsoft.
• In the Qlik Scripts; use a couple of $(Include...) statements
• Export the visual dashboards, from the Qlik Sense server, as QVF files to disk and checkin in version-control

[PlatformManager-Expert]

Hi Allard,

I think there is a better way to track changes and have version control at the same time. In4BI has a solution that does both and also help you with publishing your Qlik Sense applications. It keeps track of all changes and is able to show the differences. You don't have to change the script to allow our solution to track the changes. Another thing is that it works for QlikView and Qlik Sense so you can use 1 solution for both platforms which is a lot easier to handle for your developers. The next image shows differences in the script:

The solution works integrated with Qlik Sense so a check-out from Platform Manager puts the Qlik Sense app into your MyWork stream and opens Qlik Sense. When you're done simply save your work and perform a Check-in that removes the app from your Qlik Sense stream and stores it back into Platform Managers storage. Compared to your solution this seams like a more secure way to handle changes without having to move any files around. I would be very  interested to hear your thoughts on this.