Why does Nprinting not have a debug option at all

[MartW]

Goodday,

I'm using N-printing not for a very long time, but the main drawback to when I use it is the lack of a debug mode.

the only messages that pop up in either the template editor or via the execution manager are these kind of messages. (see screenshot)

In Qliksense the debug feature shows where the error occurs.  In other programing languages it shows the line where the error occured. 

With Nprinting it is a game of let's guess where the error might have occured when debugging.

with small reports I can easily temporary delete some content and run the report. but when you need to debug a 40 + page report (let's of levels and multiple Qlikapps being used in this report) it will take a long time.

the error's that Nprinting shows are very brief (see screenshot again)

Why does Nprinting NOT have a debug mode or readable error handeling like most (Qlik) software?

@Ruggero_Piccoli as you are one of the founders, how come this was never a core feature of the product.

I'm wondering if anybody have requested this feature to be added in the past and why it is not already in Nprinting.

the product is created in 2010 and might have changed a lot after this but why is a basic feature like a proper debug option to show where Nprinting fails not already added to the product. it is 2024 (14 years later)

[Or]

I can't really help you with the base request, other than to say that some of us share the frustration. NPrinting is a good concept, but the integration with QlikView and QlikSense has always left something to be desired and was never anywhere near seamless.

My understanding is that NPrinting is very much on the back burner these days, as Qlik Cloud offers different options for the same business requirements and the effort is put into the new tools rather than the old. Perhaps with these new tools the integration will work better, though obviously that doesn't help those of us still using NPrinting at the moment.

[MartW]

@Or, yea, it is good that Qlik is developing new features and upgrading old once to Cloud.

hopefully Qlik will intergrate those new features seamlessly into the cloud platform. 

this question is also a bit of frustration with the Nprinting product. like you say the core concept is good but the integration with Qlikview/Sense is not alyways that smooth (let's put it that way) 

but I still keep wondering if a product that was created in 2010 why the developers of Vizubi or after Qlik's purchase of Nprinting the Qlik developers never thought, let's put in a debug mode to help or debug nprinting reports.

[David_Friend]

@MartW is there something specific we can try and help with? What version of NP are you on? What version of QV?  Yes obviously its not a perfect product, but that is far beyond the scope of Qlik Community.

[Lech_Miszkiewicz]

Hi @MartW 

I am not trying to say that your frustration does not have grounds, but at the same time we have to look at what NPrinting is and how it works to see limitiations around debugging. 

Effectively you have 3 components:

1. Qlik Sense/QlikView
2. API (Excel, Power Point, Word, DevExpress for pixel perfect etc..)
3. NPrinting component binding it together to produce report

The error you see is likely what you get from the API side so there is not much to add to it. Components you must check are compatibility and properly built and supported Qlik App (often users use unsupported objects, calculated dimensions etc as they did not have training or did not study 500 pages help end to end). In that case issue is purely in Qlik Sense and cannot be debugged via NPrinting. 

Once you have this out of the way and use supported objects and you build your template by the book if there is an error it can be easily picked up as it will likely be NPrinting error which will be more descriptive.

So again - I see where you are coming from, but also I see that with what NPrinting is you cannot get full debug mode.

Besides - there is DEBUG mode and Engine logs which also help with troubleshooting of the errors.

cheers

[MartW]

@David_Friend thx for the response.
No not a specific question. I've had some frustrating moments with Nprinting yes (see my post history 😀)
I have used multiple NP version.

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@David_Friend wrote:

Yes obviously its not a perfect product, but that is far beyond the scope of Qlik Community.

---

that is an interesting point you point out there.

I would argue that this is the right place to talk about this.
isn't the community not where we discuss the products or help find solutions to problems we as developers/users face?

as you say, the product is not perfect. So why not discuss the problems and let's fix them (or fix them for the Cloud version).
I  know that the problems aren't fixed within a month or a quarter, but 14 years ... (that is a long time) ?
I would be a bit weird to say that nobody has ever mentioned an debug mode for N-printing.

[MartW]

@Lech_Miszkiewicz  Thanks for clear up a bit how the inner works of Nprinting are working.

but, it would be helpful to have a better debug mode available.

Let's say I run a Word report (10 objects) and the 5th object returns an error from a Microsoft API.

It would be helpful to have an debug/error log to pop-up with information like this:

error occurred here:
Object:                x 
Qlik Obejct ID:        b1
Nprinting Object ID:   c2
On page:               5 (seeing from the template editor)
Level active Yes/No:   No
example:                Windows API.
Filters used in report
        - Filter1 : ...
        - Filter2 : ... 
Filters used in object.
        - Filter Object: ...

I assume that Nprinting starts at the top of a document with objects and moves down the list.

So if it encounters an error it would be very handy to see where in the Nprinting document this happend.

Only a popup box with an error saying object reference not set to an instance of an object is a vague error.

an error/ debug popup box should provide information of where the error occurred. that is in my opinion the purpose of an error/ debug popup box

in this case it can just say Chickens are amazing, but it didn't cause this error.

It is basically the same info you are giving a user (with the Object not set to a reference error popup box) because the popup box don't specify what object in Qlik and what filters where used and why it failed to generate the Nprinting report

I do agree on unsupported objects.

But this can easily be fixed with an popup box saying that that the template you are using is using unsupported objects.

I also agree on the calculated dimension part of your response.

This can be a hard one to root out.

But I think that if some proper debugging/logging info is given you can (more easily) rule this out via the deduction methode. 

this error happend, it is not because of an MS API issue (check) it is not because of an unsupported objects (check) so it must be...

(I'm oversimplifying  of course)

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@Lech_Miszkiewicz wrote:

Besides - there is DEBUG mode and Engine logs which also help with troubleshooting of the errors.

---

that is true. but not always developers or users for that matter have access to those files.

[Lech_Miszkiewicz]

Hi @MartW 

1. I see your point, I have nothing to add.
2. I have survived more than 10 years with what it is and yes, having proper debug mode would be helpful. At the same time with knowledge what is supported and what is not I didn't have to use it nor I I had experienced issues. If there were errors there were product bugs causig it.
3. Looking at the product lifecycle i would not expect this to be added to the product - sorry

cheers