Advice for working with multple applications and "developers"
Hi,
We currently have a single QV application running as a POC. In a next phase of the project we want to start building additional applications for different divisions. We are currently investigating how this can be done is the best way to accomodate the following requirements:
Each division (sales, marketing, product development...) will have its own application containing information specific to the division
Each of the applications should contain a number of "corporate" items that are common to all divisions
For future revision of the applications, it should be possible to enhance both the corporate as well as the divisional parts of the application.
Responsibility for data and corporate application parts is with IT, responsibility for the divisional parts is with the divisions themselves.
Based on my limited knowledge of QV, I thinking of the following setup:
IT builds invidual QVD files containing the various data sets
IT builds a corporate "template" for the applications
IT provides data for divisional applications (combination of corporate template and division specific data)
Division build division specific parts of the application
Some concerns I have are things like how to handle simultaneous development on the corporate application template and the divisional application. Any advice on how to handle this, and other pitfalls to watch out are highly appreciated.
I am thinking a lot of how one could manage these requirements.
But unfortunately collaborative development is not really a strength of Qlikview (hopefully not yet).
I think it is a good starting point dividing your data to seperate QVD-files (database layer)
Then I would put these files together in a data-model for each division (data model)
then I would do only a QVW-binary-load for every division and (if necessary) make them available to the appropriate departmet via NTFS-rights ... (this would also include a graphical template, so this is a good starting point for the departments)
Another interesting topic would be code-versioning with subversion or something like that, but I think this topic is so interesting that I will open a new seperate thread for this ...
Hope this helps a litte bit ... but I am looking forward to the following discussion .... 🙂
Sven Moens wrote:<ul><li>IT builds invidual QVD files containing the various data sets </li><li>IT builds a corporate "template" for the applications </li><li>IT provides data for divisional applications (combination of corporate template and division specific data) </li><li>Division build division specific parts of the application
I agree with the setup you've described.
It shouldn't be difficult to manage simultaneous QVD development in IT, because it should be rare that two people want to work on the same QVD at the same time. You could always manage a checkout procedure manually if you expect a problem, such as adding your name to the file while you're modifying it, Orders-John.qvw for instance. Just a thought. Plenty of other ways, but since collisions are likely to be rare, I'd suggest something as simple as possible for the developers.
If IT is modifying the corporate template at the same time as a division developer is modifying a division application, I don't see that as a problem. Once a division developer starts creating their application from the template, it's theirs. If they want a new feature that IT has introduced in the corporate template, they'll have to add it manually. This isn't simultaneous development in the sense that it isn't development on the same file.
I'm not sure what sort of install procedure you're using, but there's another place where you want to make sure you don't have problems. You don't, for instance, want developer A installing developer B's in-process changes. Still, just the file rename should be enough if you just instruct everyone to not remove their name until their changes are tested to the point where they wouldn't mind if someone else installed it.
I'm not sure exactly where IT responsibility ends and division responsibility begins. At our shop, while we experimented with pushing development outside of IT, it didn't really work, so at this point, all responsibility usually lies within IT. It sounds like IT will be in charge of all QVDs, but you may find yourself losing control unless you're very quick responding to requests. If I were a division developer, I wouldn't wait for IT when my copy of QlikView had the authority and I had the knowledge to make the change, and my boss is beating on me for results, and IT isn't responding. I'd just do it, and that's not necessarily the best thing for the company as a whole, particularly if I know just enough about QlikView to really mess things up. That's where I think one of the biggest dangers lies. I don't have a good answer other than being VERY responsive to requests from the divisions. Make them the top priority. Try to complete them immediately if possible, the same day if not.
