BI Tools comparison/ Qlikview features understanding!!Please advice!!!
Hi ,
Could you guys please comment on the following features of Qlikview? I am actually doing a comparison of BI tools ( mainly Cognos) and different vendors for one of our clients. I do not have extensive knowledge of Qlikview and would appreciate your help on these details.
1. Data Handling capabilities: Can we approximate by rule of thumb know how much data can Qlikview handle? Like for Cognos cubes on a 32 bit machine its 2GB max.. I do know that it depends on the hardware and configuration but is there any rough estimate?
2. Emailing capabilties: I know Qlikview can be used to email but does it have advanced options of robust/report bursting like in Cognos? Also does it have some simple interface like Cognos has where in you just go and type the email address and schedule the task without the use of any macros or etc like in Qlikview?
3. Email Report versions: Can we email a report in pdf, csv, excel, 2002,2007, HTML etc or is it just PDF? Also what all versions can we see the report in? (apart from PDF)
4. Integration with Web components and customizing content on IE or any other client with objects from web: I heard there is something in version 10? Can somebody elaborate please? I know it is major pain in Cognos atleast...or used to be...
5. Data integration and migration: How is it in Qlikview if we have to migrate tons of data? Lets say there is a merger ( one is using Qlikview and the other some other BI tool) . Do we still plug into source db for Qlikview and then build reports ? Or is there is a smarter way to do it in Qlikview? What then about the Data models and other aggregations already available already? do we need to re model in any specific way or is it case to case basis?
6. What happens to traditional modeling concepts: RDBMS, , Dimensioanlly modeled relational database etc? meaning do we need to do these at all in db or we just leave it as it is and Qlikview will take care of rest? What then of all the database traps we might face lets say in a badly modeled db? How does Qlikview handle all this without data duplication or data quality issues? what then of OLTP, star schema, snow flaked schema? Do we still need to do all this for better performance?
7. Complex data and report functions: I know that Cognos has quite rich functions in the way data can be changed before reporting? How does Qlikview stack up against it? Or is it still for simple analysis and we can do only simple analytical functions on the data?
8. No of concurrent users/ Total no of users: Is there is set number by your experience for a 32 bit or 62 bit machine?
9. How is enterprise wide scheduling of jobs/Cognos reports/ tasks handled? Have we seen any issue with the scalability on that?
10. Montioring tools for performance: Do we need to use some 3rd party tools( Keynote, Mercury etc) to measure some important KPI's w.r.t to Qlikview applications availability, its performace for certain documents or is there a feature inbuilt in Qlikview which can be sued to do this reporting? I am talking about how long a certain Qlikview took to run on server or Qlikview access point? I have seen some 3rd party tools being used o Cognos applications for measuring these parameters.
11. Audit : Is there is a audit db that needs to be created for Qlikview like in Cognos? to basically log in all the details of all the transactions? How is it done in Qlikview? Any easy interface to pull that data out? Its quite a pain in Cognos to configure the audit db and then build reports out of it.
12. How are deployments handled in Qlikview? I mean is there a way IT can control it and organize it? How can quality be ensured after deployments? Also how do we handle cases lets say the db goes down or just crashes...The reports can be still read from RAM I understand ...but is there a robust way of managing it? Like lets say we a .mdc file in Cognos which is the aggregated cube?
13. Language support: Does it support all languages and diff language settings on different db's with a single server but different UI for different Language user?
14. How are all the new features in Qlikview accessed by Partners?
15. Support in Qlikview: Do we have like standard support like all other major vendors in Qlikview for their products? Is it free for any partner who has bought the software and Licenses?
Too many questions but would really appreciate your help on this.
