Dev Enviroments (do you? experiences?)

[MalcolmCICWF]

We are soon going to try migrating our Qlikview environment to a virtual server. The powers to be inquired as to why there is no Development environment currently... I didn't have an answer as this is what I had inherited 4+ years ago and we have really had no issues. The problem is our other developing groups have Dev, QA, and Prod environments and that seems preferred.

I was wondering what everyone else has experience with as far as a Dev environment. How does it work with the server license? with the Named CALs we have assigned already since you need a named CAL for developing and getting to Access Point. How do you manage them?

[Peter_Cammaert · Accepted solution]

IMHO Dev environments on the same platform as the Pruduction environment don't offer many advantages (if any at all), as your production environment is still in a lot of danger when developers start testing cartesian products and other Wild JOins.  Gone is your RAM, often in only a few seconds...

If your QlikView set-up is small, a single environment with developùment on laptops/desktops will do. For medium sized environments (100 users, medium load), two platforms will often do, with Production on a separate machine and Dev&QA together on a second machine. QlikView Enterprises further scales linearly to whatever environment you need.

Qlik offers special licenses for development environments called "Test server licenses" They are far cheaper than production licenses and automatically include the same number of CALs you bought for your production server. Only one caveat: Named CALs from your Test Server license cannot be leased. They can only be used in the AccessPoint.

Best,

Peter

[MalcolmCICWF]

Sorry if I made it sound like it, but there was no plan of putting them onto the same platform, just having a dev and production environment.

So with this separate test server license, do you develop reporting per usual on your desktop and then just save to or run from the dev server? I assume you only refresh qvds when needed to test a new report or are you keeping qvds on the dev servers up to date regularly as well?

[mr_barriesmith]

Qlik's Makis would support Peter's statement.  The advantage of dev, test, prod separate environments that you can do tests and "know" how production will behave.  Think especially about new Windows operating system or a significant update + moving Qlik versions.

At some of my clients the dev environment does not connect to production data.

Apps developed on dev are moved to test - refreshed - users test and on approval move to production.

Your QVD strategy here is very varied in my experience; depending on the size of the team and the data governance in play.  For me, I like test to be kept as clean as possible so that when I analyse Qlik server cpu/RAM stats I know that behaviour is primarily for the Apps being tested and not clutter from Apps that are already moved to production.  For this reason, at the start of a test-phase I will copy QVDs from production to test.  Good luck planning.

[MalcolmCICWF]

Wow, very informative and helpful, thank you.

But Peter was correct in saying you need to contact Qlik to buy a separate testing/dev license?

[mr_barriesmith]

Yes, you need to license each server and the Qlik test license is reasonable.

For my environments I seldom put QlikView Server on the development environment.  Usually the development environment is on the developer's desktop.  In large data volume development we would activate an VM and use QlikView desktop there - for all development we lease a NAMED CAL from the production server.

[MalcolmCICWF]

Thanks, very useful