Gold Client Introduction

[Troy_Raney]

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Environment

• Qlik Gold Client

Transcript

Hello and welcome. My name is Steve George and I'm a Senior Solution Engineer of SAP with a focus on Gold Client. In my job role, I install the Gold Client solution into customers' systems, provide day-to-day support to our customers, perform functional and technical training, and help maintain our team's support documentation and other content.

The purpose of this video is to provide introductory level content to someone who is a new user to the Gold Client solution; this content may also be valuable to those users who need refresher training. This is the first video in the training series that will help users gain an understanding of Gold Client and how to ultimately use its various functions.

Here are the specific items that will be covered during this presentation: What exactly is the "Gold Client" solution; I'll share some common use cases and refresh challenges; I'll provide some important points regarding authorizations and restrictions; and lastly, I'll deliver some high-level content associated with the Gold Client architecture. Let's start out by discussing what is “Gold Client”.

Gold Client is software that allows users to copy data from one SAP client into another SAP client. Users are able to copy both master and/or transactional data and are able to do so in a highly selective manner. The Gold Client solution consists of Qlik's proprietary code which is written in ABAP. The Gold Client solution resides within its own namespace of HTG which means that all of the Gold Client programs, tables, and all other development objects reside within this namespace and therefore will not have an impact on a customer's system. And because Gold Client is written in ABAP, there is no system downtime required to perform the data copies since the servers need to be available to execute the programs. Additionally, the Qlik team provides a default set of configuration that can be customized by the customer with or without the need of Qlik's engagement; the most common example of customization is, of course, the incorporation of Z-tables. Next, let's talk about use cases.

Gold Client can be useful for a number of reasons; one of the most popular is to copy production data related to a support issue into a lower-level system - such as QA or DEV - where greater access would allow the user to perform more thorough troubleshooting and root cause analysis; Another use case is to copy production data for various testing purposes; Another great example is to copy real data for training purposes rather than having to create the training data sets manually; the time saved by copying the training data is multiplied if this training must occur on a frequent basis; and finally, Gold Client also provides some additional functionality for protecting sensitive data by masking it so that it's not at-risk in lower-level systems where users typically have greater access; a few examples of sensitive data would be PII data and things like tax ID's and bank account numbers.

Customers have frequently purchased Gold Client due to one or more pain points such as: Having to copy the full production database simply takes too much time or there is too much overhead with the team's existing refresh process; There may be technical difficulties caused by growth in the production database; and challenges may exist with the team's development life cycle which are caused by having insufficient data and/or poor-quality data in the team's Development system. What we mean by this last point is that often times teams are unable to adequately test in DEV due to challenges with data quality, and therefore users will release the config or development changes, import them into QA, and test there instead. If the results are unacceptable, additional changes must then be deployed and released from DEV and imported into QA; this cycle may be repeated multiple times as needed. Ideally, unit testing should be executed in DEV until the proper outcome is achieved and only then should the changes be released from DEV to QA. So, using Gold Client to copy good data into DEV can help restore the development life cycle and reduce the associated risks that can occur when having an excessive number of transports being released.

Here are some more essential points about the Gold Client solution. It's delivered with its own authorization object, and that object has around 80 activities assigned to it. Each of these activities aligns with a button or an important setting within the Gold Client user interface. This provides each organization the necessary flexibility for providing users the appropriate amount of security. The Qlik team does not provide security role templates, but we do have a documented set of best practice recommendations that we provide to all new customers. Also, Gold Client has a programmatic safeguard that prevents users from executing imports of data into a customer's Production system and from executing data deletions from it as well (yes, it is possible to use Gold Client to delete data but more on that in a later video) … Be aware that this safeguard supersedes the user's security and is therefore independent of whatever Gold Client authorizations may have been assigned to them. So now let's begin to have a look at Gold Client from a simple architectural perspective.

This slide provides a simple visual of the architecture that must exist to copy data from one client to another. An export is first executed in the source client - for example, in Production - to collect the relevant data and write it out as a series of files in a shared directory. Once the export is complete, the user logs into the target client - whether that is in DEV, Training, Sandbox, QA, or some other system - and executes the import of data into that client. The import process opens the files, reads the data, and performs direct table updates.

So, let's take a look at a few more meaningful points: A shared directory for storing the Gold Client files must be defined and this task is normally performed by the Basis team. It is advised that the directory be centrally mounted so that all systems using Gold Client - both the Source and Targets - can access it. Additionally, the Basis team should plan on applying some sort of housekeeping process so that older files are purged and to prevent the directory from filling up; there are internal factors that will help drive the decision around purging files but it's ultimately up to the organization to decide at what age the files should be purged and how frequently this process should be executed. Gold Client users are not able to write files anywhere other than to the designated directory. Files created during an export are reusable so as long as they remain in the directory. The advantage for the user is that they can import the data set into multiple targets and/or import the same data set into the same target repeatedly. For example, if you are performing some testing in DEV and your test execution changes the data in a way so that it is no longer useful, simply reimporting the data should reset it so that you can execute your test again. Another example would be to first import the data set in DEV for testing, and if the results are successful, import the same data set into QA and execute the test there as well.

We've reached the end of this presentation and I thank you for your attention. My hope is that you now have a high-level understanding of Gold Client, including possible use cases, as well as some of the important technical aspects that need to be in place such as the authorizations and architecture. I encourage you to watch the other Gold Client videos that are available so you can continue your training journey.