It has been an interesting few years for someone who has been very close to what Qlik has been doing with its products and in the market place. Their core product has evolved slowly and gained few new features at each release, while other products were gaining ground. Supporters of these other products talk of better visualizations and a more seamless integration with the web—which is after all where we live our lives these days. As Qlik followers, we were given talk of a roadmap of what was then known as Next and some glimpses of the UI that is built for mobile first and is fully responsive might look like. The gap between QlikView and these concepts seemed quite wide at the time. Was Qlik going to be able to bridge the gap and take their offering forward?

It was July 2014 when the desktop only version of Qlik Sense made its first appearance. Here you could see the responsive UI, the ease with which things could be built, and you could certainly see that it was not a new version of QlikView. It whets the appetite for what was to come, but in many ways it raised more questions than it gave answers. So much of what the QlikView developers had come to take for granted had been taken away—the most curious omission from the initial release was the pivot table. Yet there were some similarities, which meant that porting things to this new product was relatively painless, the fact that the load script and expression syntax is almost identical certainly helped. The most important thing was, and still is, that at its core Qlik Sense has the same associative data model and the green, white, and grey selections are at the heart of QlikView.

While the initial release may have been met with skepticism by some (myself included), who have a history of creating applications in QlikView, there is no doubt that it heralded a sea of change in the amount of new features and innovation that came in with each Sense release.

The Sense Server became available with the initial desktop release, which allowed the creation of applications on any platform that has a browser and provides top class governance. The features that were obvious omissions from the initial release have made an appearance, for example pivot tables and variables. The product has expanded in various ways and more than what you might expect, such as the ability of an end user to pick their own colors for a chart even if they only have view access. Even after using the product for some time, it still has the ability to surprise me; for instance, the way the smart search knows the best way to interpret what I type in, even if they are vague. The snapshots and stories mean that more can be done without leaving the product, while the "single configurator" means that higher percentage of product can be embedded into other places.

The innovation and expansion didn't stop here either. Sense now powers the Qlik Cloud, a free to use service, where you can upload data and build and share visualizations right within your browser. This is where I get the most excited with where the things are headed; where previously the price tag of QlikView was a limiting factor outside of business, now anyone can explore data and display it in ways that make it meaningful. Simply put, they can master the building blocks of what makes a great BI app. The availability and ease of use of Qlik Cloud means that I have even been encouraging my children to use it for their homework. The barriers to the world of data discovery are being torn down. These are exciting times.

It is against this backdrop that the book you have in front you has been written. As each chapter was handed over for review, it seemed that another Sense version had been released and some buttons had moved from the location they were in, in the screenshot given in the draft. Various re-writes were required to refer to the latest Sense version, rather than the one that was out at the time of the first writing. The speed at which things are improving is fantastic to see—even if it's a bit frustrating for the authors of books on the subject! This constant innovation and improvement is evidenced in this book by the fact that a chapter was required at the end simply to cover the new features in the latest version—a sure sign of a vibrant product.

Whether you are shifting to Qlik Sense and are already familiar with QlikView or if you have come across it more recently, this book covers many things that you will need to know. From the simple use of the repositories and building straight forward dashboards to getting under the bonnet and building your own extensions, it is all here.

Sense is full of surprises and this book is your guide to unlocking some of the gems hidden within it. I hope you are ready to roll up your sleeves and get work with what is on offer.

Steve Dark

Director, Quick Intelligence Ltd