QlikView and Qlik Sense

[hic]

As most of you have noticed – I hope – we have now released a new product.

Qlik Sense.

Qlik Sense is not just a new release of QlikView. Instead it is something different. But there are still so many similarities between the two products, so I thought it would be appropriate to dedicate a blog post to differences and similarities between the two.

Basically, the two products are two different user interfaces to the same analysis engine. This means that old scripts and old formulae will (almost) always work exactly the same way as before. (There are some smaller differences in that Qlik Sense uses libraries, and cannot always use relative paths for files.)

Hence, the two products both have the same Green-White-Gray logic; both use the same calculation engine; both have roughly the same response times; and you should use the same considerations for both when it comes to data modelling. This also means that many of the previous posts here on the Design Blog are just as relevant for Qlik Sense as for QlikView.

But the two products are still very different. And just as a parent cannot say that one child is better than the other, I cannot say that one product is better than the other. They are good at different things:

• QlikView is a tool for situations where you want prepared business applications, i.e. applications created by developers who put a lot of thought into the data model, the layout, the charts and the formulae; and deliver the applications to end-users who consume the applications. We call this Guided Analytics. The end-user has total freedom to explore data, select, drill down and navigate in the information, and can this way discover both questions and answers in the data. The end-user is however limited when it comes to creating new visualizations. This type of situation will without doubt be common for many, many years to come.
• Qlik Sense is a tool for situations where you don’t want to pre-can so much. Instead you want the user to have the freedom to create a layout of his own and in it, new visualizations; charts that the developer couldn’t imagine that the user wants to see. You want Self-service data discovery, which means a much more active, modern, engaged user. In addition, Qlik Sense is much easier to use when you have a touch screen, and is adaptive to different screen sizes and form factors. On the whole, Qlik Sense is a much more modern tool.

Finally, it is important to acknowledge that a piece of software is never ready. It evolves constantly:

Qlik Sense today is only the first version of something that will evolve further and get more features and functions as time goes on. Some of the features and functions of QlikView have not yet been implemented in Qlik Sense – there just hasn’t been time enough – but many of them will be implemented in coming versions.

Also QlikView is not yet a "final product". The product will be developed further, and most likely we will see some of the new functionality from Qlik Sense also in coming versions of QlikView. The goal is to use the same platform for both user interfaces.

With these two tools, we believe that we are well prepared for the future.

HIC

[robert99]

One of the main goals for Qlik Sense was to have one unified client that could run on anything  (=html5). Another goal was to generalize the chart drawing code, so that more graph types could be implemented (=extensions). A third goal was that the client needed to be adaptable to screen sizes and form factors.

Is this expanded on anywhere? I assume html5 is for development only. I do not understand the second point. Why is this necessary? Why can't more graph types be added to QV if required. 3. I thought QV could be used on various screen sizes.

And thanks for this post. And fronting up to answer questions. (some blog posters disappointingly do not). It has helped to clear up confusion. But Qlik is maybe now in a slightly tricky position. One product that the company itself believes is not good enough (and current or potential new users might think the real plan is to slowly drop or stop being fully committed to it). And another that is not even close to being as good as this product IMHO.

I have downloaded Qlik Sense and would rate it as OK but certainly would not have recommended purchasing at this point. I do like the product however especially the light and dark grey and hope it is introduced to QV. What I might do is use Qlik View (for new developments) but give a number of users the use of Qlik Sense (with script set up) and see if they use it or not. I suspect not but they might.

[Brice-SACCUCCI]

Hi RJ,

Try to change the size of the window of Qlik Sense Desktop and you'll understand how the "responsiveness" of Qlik Sense offers adaptability to any screen size and form factor.

If you like the light grey feature, try enabling "show alternatives" on your lists in QV. You'll get the same result but with yellow instead of light grey. Check this blog post for instance :

http://www.quickintelligence.co.uk/the-power-of-yellow/

Brice

[Anonymous]

The first thing I said to my QlikTech salesman was:

"We don't want 2 product but one that work.

You presented a new revamped HTML5 front for Qlikview since the presentation of .Next, and now you are going to sell it a 2 product ? Why ? Is it just to get money from your customers ?"

His only answer was to present it to us in few weeks. We will see, but I'm realy desapointed.

I just hope that sense could connect to a QlikView Server, did someone test that?

I can't try it yet, it's not working on XP (and it will take us one year to migrate out of it), and the client can't be installed on a Windows server.

[robert99]

Thanks. I will turn alternatives on at work (as it adds information). The users will get use to this fairly quickly (Ive also found hide excluded. But grey is clear now so will not switch this on)

[ThornOfCrowns]

"Finally, it is important to acknowledge that a piece of software is never ready." - HIC

"Art is never finished, only abandoned." - Leonardo da Vinci

[DavidFoster1]

I like Brad Bird’s:

‘A film is never finished. You’re there tinkering away and then the door comes down cccthhhuunnk.’

[#8]

well Linux has lots of distributions, and for web like Drupal is spammed with modules. I know this is not an open source project, but perhaps the future for BI is to accept multiple concepts for each Brand.    

[paul_scotchford]

I'm curious to hear what issues you have at the enterprise level?! We are an Enterprise and have not had any issues that we would downgrade the product to not Enterprise ready, sure there are little quirks etc, but over all the product performs well.

Please share your experiences, perhaps there are answers the community can provide, especially us Enterprise users.

Thanks

Paul

[Anonymous]

Great news...im already testing QlikSense and its looks very powerful with the look and feel concept!!

but i've some questions like, it doesn't have the macro editor? or how can i display this .qvf on my Access Point?...

im running QlikServer 11.2 on Win2008 r2.

Thanks

Juan

[amonjaras]

Hello Juan,

Qlik Sense is aimed at quick, self-service visualizations made by non-technical users. This user population is different from the current QlikView Developers / Analysts. For this reason, I doubt the addition of macros is being considered.

As for the Access Point, Sense Desktop is a self-contained environment that includes the QIX engine; the "hub" is Sense's equivalent of the QlikView access point. That means we cannot run QVFs on QlikView Server.