Qlikview associativity irrespective of datatypes

[#1]

Hi everybody,

     I wanted know whether QlikView checks datatypes before associating two fields with same names from different tables?

I tried implementing one such scenario where I took 'id' filed of type 'int' in one table and varchar in another and, yet it associated the two fields. Will such associativity result in some wrong results or analysis?

Thanks in advance

Madhura

[Gysbert_Wassenaar]

No, it does not. Tables are associated on field names. If two tables have a field with the same name then that field is used to associate the tables. The contents of the fields in the tables is not considered.

A numeric value is not a string, so a record with a numeric value in field X in table A will never be related to a record in table B with a string value in field X.

But Qlikview will try to interpret any value. If it encounters '1234' in a varchar field and you have not explicitly told Qlikview to treat it as text then it will be converted into the number 1234.

[#3]

Hi Gysbert,

Yes, that is true but, would there be any scenarios where it affects the analysis on data. I cant think of a case where it will affect operations on data.

Rgards

[#4]

How to explicitly set datatypes of fields while fetching data from a database?

[swuehl · Accepted solution]

There are no data types in QlikView:

Data Types in QlikView

There are just dual values with text and numeric representations. You need to take care that your values read from your (different) sources are interpreted correctly (i.e. concerning key fields - in a semantically consistent manner).

Use the interpretation functions to do so (num#(), date#() etc).

[#6]

Ok, yes I see that is one way out if my data model is containing fields with incorrect datatypes.

Thanks Swuehl.