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Margaret
Creator II
Creator II

why can't I see connectors or keys in Source Table View?

why are many of the connectors and keys missing in Source Table View? I can see lots in Internal Table View but only a couple in Source Table View. And I can't see the keys in the tables either. I want to see all the keys in all the tables in which they appear. There's a $Syn 4 Table in Internal Table View. Other qvw's with a $Syn 4 Table in Internal Table View show lots of connecting lines connecting all the keys in Source Table View.

 

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4 Replies
Miguel_Angel_Baeyens

Hard to say without a better idea of the data model.

However, if you see $Syn tables, that could be a very good reason. As opposed to other RDBMS, and not being QlikView a RDBM itself, the way Qlik associates tables is when two tables share one or more fields with exactly the same name, case sensitive.

When two or more of those fields exist in two or more tables, a synthetic table is created. This, per se, is not an error and it may work just fine, as any other composite key, but in my experience, it often comes from errors in the data model.

Think of an "Order" table with an "ID" field, and think of a "Customer" table with an "ID" field. If there are no changes in the script, these two tables with be linked by the ID field, which may not be desirable (the Customer.ID has one format and the Order.ID has a different format, both refer to different entities, etc.). 

Think now that both have an "Address" field, a synthetic table will be created for both tables, such synthetic table will include the cartesian product of the values of ID and Address.

The way the data model viewer represents this on screen is by another table with a "$Syn_" preceding the label of the table. This table does not really exist as such table (i.e.: you cannot refer to its contents in an isolated way), and oftentimes is referred to as "Syntehtic Key" instead.

https://help.qlik.com/en-US/qlikview/April2019/Subsystems/Client/Content/QV_QlikView/Scripting/synth...

In your case, $Syn4 means that 4 or more tables share at least 2 or more fields, I'd suggest to check whether this is how you want to load the data or rather, due to something similar to the example above, which could be solved by creating concatenated keys or removing redundant fields (for example, Customer.ID is only required twice, in the Order table and the Customer table, it may appear in the OrderLine table, which is redundant to the Order one).

Margaret
Creator II
Creator II
Author

I understand synthetic keys and their pros and cons. I like the way they are being created and am getting the desired results with my data. I'd like to see the connectors between the tables without the $Syn tables complicating the visualization, the way I do in other qvw's. What I'm hoping to understand is why I cannot.

I attached both Internal Table View and Source Table View images exported from the same qvw. Source Table View leaves one small $Syn 4 Table, but neglects to display many of the columns that appear in multiple tables and their associated  connectors.

Brett_Bleess
Former Employee
Former Employee

Margaret, I believe the following Help link is what you were looking for here:

https://help.qlik.com/en-US/qlikview/April2019/Subsystems/Client/Content/QV_QlikView/Table_Viewer.ht...

Regards,
Brett

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Margaret
Creator II
Creator II
Author

Nope. I read that before I posted. It doesn't explain the behavior I'm seeing.