What is the user concurrency of a Session CAL?

[yusuffawzan]

In a recent discussion, me and my friends had conflicting point of views. The discussion was around session CAL and what could be the concurrency of a particular session CAL. The discussion was as follows:

Consider a hypothetical 30 people team where each person views all Qlikview documents / applications N number of times but the only condition is that each person is allotted a particular day of the month to do this. A session CAL is used to cater these 30 people [This might not be the best way to give them access but for the sake of discussion we took it this way]. So, person#1 uses the session CAL with his login and does his work on the 1st day of the month, person#2 does the same on the second day of the month and so on. It was Feb 28, and that day person#28 logged in. On March 1, person#29 logs in but person#1 follows the date and tried logging in too. Now, what could have happened:

Me: Person#1 was not allowed to log in (as it's the same session CAL and the session is already being used by person#29) i.e Number of concurrent users in a single session CAL is ONE

Friend: Person#1 is also allowed to log in (as 1 session CAL can have maximum of 10 concurrent users logging in at a time) i.e Number of concurrent users in a single session CAL is TEN

Another Friend: If it was an Extranet session CAL then as 1 session CAL could have can been distributed among only 10 people but only 1 could log in at a time i.e Concurrency = ONE

If it was a regular session CAL then it could be distributed amongst many but only 10 concurrent users could log in at once i.e Concurrency = TEN

My friends have worked with Session CALs and I haven't however I felt it was best to get an answer from the Qlik team itself. It's very confusing, can someone clarify and correct the three statements.

Thanks

Fawzan

[Gysbert_Wassenaar]

Session calls have a minimum session time of 15 minutes. If the session is closed after that time the session cal should be released immediately. From the Server Reference Manual:

A Session CAL allows any user, identified or anonymous/unidentified, on one QlikView

client to access as many QlikView documents as may reside on the server or server cluster to

which the Session CAL is assigned for a minimum period of 15 minutes. For Session CALs,

the QlikView client refers to each unique instance of the QlikView client (for example, the

AJAX client, QlikView Desktop, or the Internet Explorer plugin) on the user’s machine. The

minimum session time for a Session CAL is 15 minutes, which means that sessions that end

in less than 15 minutes will still consume the session until the 15 minute mark is passed;

those which terminate after 15 minutes will consume their actual session length. By default,

there is no maximum session length, but this can be configured.

[yusuffawzan]

Hi gwassenaar

Thanks for mentioning that but here the question is different, The usage is how much ever time they want within those 24 hours window. So could be more than 15 mins. Now out of us, I feel that I am right as my answer is according to what was written in the manuals and from what I've heard. My friends specified that they have used Session CALs and from that experience they gave their answer. Can you / anyone clarify who is right?

[#4]

I don't know where this idea of ten concurrent users with one session CAL has come from. The whole point of session CALs is that one CAL = one concurrent user. If you want ten concurrent users using session CALs then you need ten session CALs (whether on extranet server or not).

[Gysbert_Wassenaar]

I thought my answer would make clear that only one user can use session cal at a time. So, yes, you're right.

[Peter_Cammaert]

Session CAL = any user using strictly one client (in total) can have access to any document. That mean that concurrency is always one, but in a very strict way. The same user opening a second client on his laptop/desktop to connect to a different QlikView server document at the same time as the existing session, needs a second Session CAL. Closing the first client before starting the second one will release the session but the Session CAL will not be released before it before at least 15 minutes have passed since the start of the session.

I didn't know that an Extranet server uses Session CALs in a different way. Are you sure about that?

[yusuffawzan]

Yes, Extranet server has separate session CALs which actually cost lesser than the regular ones. But concurrency being more than one was something that was new to me. However, thank you for clarifying.