Qlik vs. other BI tools

[ethal]

I have been assuming that a BI tool is a BI tool and while UI and language might change they’re pretty much the same. Currently I am transferring to Qlik-related position and wondering what learning learning curve might be as opposed to other tools.

Anyone having experience on migrating your work practices from one tool to another? How your experience on learning curve have been? In my experience migrating from IBM to MS was fairly straighforward but wondering if there are quirks when it comes to Qlik.

[Oleg_Troyansky]

Hi @ethal 

This is a great question! In addition to the obvious difference in the UI and in the way of building charts and writing scripts, there is one fundamental difference with Qlik - it runs in memory, and it does automatic normalization of data behind the scenes. This fundamental understanding drives your data modeling decisions and your understanding of "what's good and what's bad" in Qlik, compared to the same in RDB.

So, while DB/2 and SQL Server are fundamentally similar, Qlik data management is fundamentally different.

- Databases like normalization, and Qlik most often doesn't

- In databases, it's OK to have dozens (or hundreds) of different tables, while in Qlik it's usually a bad practice.

etc. etc. etc.

So, I could recommend taking an advanced training class or reading some specialized books. My book QlikView Your Business was written mostly for QlikView, but it teaches a lot of advanced material about Qlik application development, that's not covered anywhere else. I'd recommend to check it out.

Good luck!

[cotiso_hanganu]

Good points, Oleg !

I would add that some of the script functions and capabilites Qlik have brings great time savings for various situations
(hierarchy, intervalmatch, subfield, textbetween, just to name a few).

(Tried to sell some of my Qlik scripts, but translated in SQL ... and... I gave up !
Yes, I can admit that maybe my SQL skills are not so high as my Qlik scripting skills