Am I using Qlik Sense wrong? (Loading data)

[patriciousa]

HI community.

I'm a business administrator and I have been working with Qlik Sense to visualize data, learning all I can from these forums.

How do I use it?

I always get information straight from SAP tables, like LFA1, LFBK, EKBO, EKBE, etc to Excel and Load them into Qlik.

I have been told that I'm not suppose to do that, that I should have a "data warehouse" (not entirely sure what it is yet) where I process the data so I can avoid Qlik Sense to process the syntax in every table, chart, or any view I want it to show, therefore, I would get a much smoother tool and shorter loading time.

So, if I'm suppose to always get the data from SAP, process it somewhere else to get only the data I want to be shown in Qlik Sense's sheets, why do things like SAP connector exists? and I'm not even sure what does the SAP connector actually do.

Thank you so much in advance.

Regards.

[patriciousa]

bump

[satish25]

Hi patrico mesri,

Using SAP (SQL) Connector ,

you are able to load entire data from the SAP Database.

Like SAP Tables with its Internal Fields (i.e LFA1,VBRK,VBRP etc).

[jyothish8807]

Hi Patrico,

As far as i understand from your query, i believe there is nothing wrong in the way you are doing right now.

But you can always use SAP connectors and connect to SAP and fetch the data from SAP directly , instead of getting the data into excel, then loading them. But SAP connectors are not freeware, it comes with a cost.

So, if you want to eliminate the cost, then you can get the exports from SAP into excel and then use them.

With regards to cleansing and transformation of data, i believe you can completely depend on Qlikview and that the beauty of this tool. You can do it without setting up a data-ware house which is again an additional cost.

I hope i was able to answer few of your queries.

Br,

KC

[tomasz_tru]

You have to take into account systems architecture, security issues, volume of data you are processing, data transformations you are doing. Maybe there is a reason that IT suggested extra database (for example aggregations on large datasets is better to do on SQL side not Qlik's). Or they just don't understand how Qlik works.

Tomasz

[robert99]

Hi Patrico

Who told you that you are supposed to use a Data warehouse? But having said this I would not go via Excel. But sometimes this is the only option available. And the administrators will not set up a direct Qlik connection.

But I try to avoid a separate non Qlik data warehouse as it involves another level of complexity and cost. And fortunately Qlik is powerful enough that a separate non Qlik DW is not needed (maybe with huge amounts of data but that's not my field). 

But Qlik can sort of follow a data warehouse approach anyway.

I (unless its a simple one off App) extract data from say SAP (using Qlik) and save as QVD tables on an incremental extraction basis. I then load from these QVD tables. Some (and I have at times when heavy transforming of Data is required) even go a step further with a three step process. Extract data from SAP. Transform this data and save again as Stage two QVDs. And then load from these stage 2 QVDs into the final Apps.