Qlik Sense vs Power BI

[#1]

Hi

I am just posting to find out differences or advantages and disadavanges comparing qlik sense vs power BI.

Thanks

[robert99]

I agree. The BI market has massively changed in the last year. And these changes open up a huge new market. I have recently set up a small but rapidly growing business on a small accounting package and Qlik Cloud (I showed them the Power BI option but they much preferred Qlik Sense. As I do too). The server version would have been too expensive for them at this point or for some time. And the owners want everything on the cloud.

I don't find the automatic updating the main issue though. It's easy enough once the link is established between the cloud accounting product and Sense desktop to upload to the cloud. Just click a few buttons. One to update the desktop. And one or two to upload to Sense cloud. I only do this upload three times a week (I may do it daily when they grow).

It's the all or nothing option as far as security goes. I hope Qlik make Apps (Sense files) visible to selected users not all users. And then have section access working. But I'm sure (or hope) that Qlik is working on these issues. And how to sell the cloud version cheap initially (its just the way it is now) but over time make good money from what is an excellent BI (and computer software) solution.

[paul_scotchford]

DAX is the powerBI language, it can be very confusing to the untrained, it also expects your underlying model to be very simple and then DAX is where the complexity expands itself.

[ecolomer]

Hi,

Can you send me this report to [redacted].

Thank's in advance

Saludos,

Enrique Colomer

Note: Edited by Community Moderator to remove public display email address.

[robert99]

Done. Hopefully I haven't missed anyone

[Anonymous]

Thanks so much Robert!  Quite a good review of the 3 products.

some questions:

Incremental Load                                                   Excellent                Good                        N/A

how do you incrementally load data in sense cloud? - i thought it only took files.  so i suppose a new file with just the new records would suffice? Is there a way to update the cloud source on a scheduled basis like you can in Power BI?  And how would it know if the records were new vs old.  Also with Power BI i was told (though i never substantiated this) that if you point the report to a Analysis Services tabular source - that the data is "live" and does not need to be loaded. is there something similar with sense cloud?

Load data only once                                             Yes (QVD)               No                              No?

what did you mean by the above line - "load data only once"

[robert99]

Hi

I didn't have time to look at the cloud options in depth. I will change my introduction to make this clearer. I only compared the desktop options for a restricted number of tests.

But also both (Power BI and Qlik Cloud) are still being developed. For example Qlik has just released cloud plus and still plan to release Cloud Corporate. Hopefully this will allow automatic loading (from a desktop, in house server or another cloud App as the desktop does) and restrictions on access to shared Apps as noted above. But for me (for now for one client only) doing everything on a desktop and uploading is not a big issue. Although for cloud accounting systems it does seem to be possible to load cloud to cloud (for a yearly cost) but I went for the cheaper cloud to desktop ODBC option (via Excel is even cheaper) and then uploading to the cloud. Maybe even Qlik cloud to one-drive cloud say is possible (I might check this out later today).

Re Load data only once. What I meant by this was an equivalent to QVDs or a binary load. I could see no way to do this in Power BI at the time I did this evaluation. Where data could be loaded into one Power BI App / file and then saved as a QVD equivalent for loading into other Apps / files. Or one App / file loading all the data from another one.

[zebrak83]

Hi Robert99,  if you could send me your comparison report it would be greatly appreciated. Thank you very much.

[redacted]

Note: Edited by Community Moderator to remove public display email address.

[Anonymous]

yes - for me I see that i have a need for dozens of reports to be hosted to a business intelligence reporting system, and I would need something that would have a way to automate refreshes from relational datasources - i cannot support several people uploading data manually on a daily basis -whether the data comes from a qvd or other file - it's simply not sustainable.  If we create an app with desktop that has an odbc connection.. does this odbc connection continue to exist and work in the cloud version once it's uploaded?

[#10]

Hi Robert,

It would be great to see your research. Can you send me the report at [redacted].

All the best,

Robbie

Note: Edited by Community Moderator to remove public display email address.

[robert99]

I have recently tested an ODBC driver from CData dot com. You would need another more expensive driver I think to do the same cloud to cloud. (they give a free 4 week trial and their email support is VG even during the trial period).

QV Source might be able to answer this question. But the cloud version can not be set up to do automatic updates (only manual updates at this point). The free basic version can't and I have not read that pro can. Hopefully Sense Enterprise Cloud edition will have this option.