Evaluation of going from Qlikview to Qlik Sense

[MEJ]

Hi all,

I have been developing Qlikview applications for about 15 years, on and off. 

I downloaded the free Desktop Qlik Sense version, just to try it out to see how it works. Also to see if there are any benefits from using Qlik Sense, and if we as a company should migrate to Qlik Sense instead. 

Installation was no problem at all. However, I didn't seem to be able to load from any drive (only the C-drive).  Is that a limitation in the "Free" Desktop version? I would also like to migrate an existing Qlikview application to Qlik Sense format. Maybe that is prohibited as well in the free version? I heard from other people that it might not convert 100%, and some of the "load from links" needs another "prefix". I briefly spoke to a colleague who said the way Qlik Sense joins tables are different from Qlikview (not sure if that's correct or not though).

All in all, I have no problems with Qlikview, and it works fine as it is. Just not sure if Qlik Sense would be a huge improvement, and worth investing time in. If it is possible to just click a button to migrate our existing QV applications straight into Qlik Sense, fine. But if it requires a lot of work, and it is a whole new way of scripting, and working with the databases, layout, etc., I might wait with an upgrade project. 

What are your experiences converting existing Qlikview applications to Qlik Sense? Is it better to create them from Scratch, or let Qlik Sense do the job for you? Some of the applications I have created are fairly extensive, and would take quite a bit of time to replicate from scratch.

Thanks

[Or]

There's no textbook answer for making the switch, but by and large, the automatic conversion isn't helpful unless your existing QVWs are super-simple on the layout side. Otherwise, You're better off copying your script to a fresh Qlik Sense app - that hasn't changed much if at all - and then creating the layout aspect of your app from scratch using correctly-defined master items. You can copy over your existing formulas from QlikView - again, the syntax hasn't changed - but you'll want to set them up manually because the automated converter does a poor job.

A few things that you will likely notice right off the bat:

* Qlik Sense is terrible at pivot tables compared to Qlik View. Some third-party options exist to bridge the gap.

* There's no built-in option to make objects take up the same space - either at the same time (when you want to overlay objects) or through hide/show conditions or containers. There are, once again, third-party options for the latter, but at least so far I haven't found one I was happy with.

* It takes more time to set up an app properly than it did in Qlik View due to the fact you set up master items first, and then create your objects based on those (you may want to make your objects master items, too). However, this is worth doing because it makes life much easier in the long run and lets users modify or create objects on the fly.

* Qlik Sense's responsiveness is great in some ways (we no longer have to design for a single specific resolution) but terrible in others (objects will change themselves whether you like it or not based on the space available to them and Qlik's responsiveness algorithms).

[MEJ]

Thanks for your answer. I was in broad context after some general tips and other people's experiences. 

As it is now, my Qlikview applications can do all I need them to do, and I haven't found anything I haven't been able to do yet that I want to do (sure, there are things I haven't found a solution for, but they are more on the list "nice to have", than an absolute necessity).

So, what I was after, was more in terms if there was something spectacular that isn't possible to do in Qlikview, and is worth the switch over. Also, if there are limitations to the "free desktop version" compared to the full developer version.

I know it should be possible to create graphs more easily using bubble charts with geographical maps, although I have created my own version in Qlikview that works well (although it is not possible to zoom in).

[Or]

If you're looking for the upside of Qlik Sense, a few key things in no particular order:

1) Apps are responsive rather than fixed-size

2) Everything has been redesigned so it looks a lot "better" - or at least, modern

3) Sense has much better central management capabilities, e.g. connections are defined globally rather than just locally.

4) From a layout/visual perspective, Sense has more charts, better-looking charts, mostly they're easier to use (for example, Alternatives in Sense are much nicer than cycling groups in View).

I don't personally think there's any huge reason to convert most apps from View to Sense. I personally have not converted any existing Qlik View apps to our relatively new Sense - we're busy working on other things related to Sense, and we'll examine the need for a conversion on a case-by-case basis later. I figure much of our existing implementation will continue to live in QlikView until there's a good reason to move it over, and for the most part, I haven't found that reason yet.