During the development of this book, Qlik released their next generation product, Qlik Sense. Qlik Sense is not, currently, a replacement product for QlikView, and Qlik has announced that they will have a two-product strategy and sell QlikView for guided BI applications and Qlik Sense for self-service BI applications. A new version, QlikView 12.0, is slated for release in the second half of 2015.

While Qlik Sense is a new product, it is built on the same heritage as QlikView. There is a new data engine, QIX, that stores the data in a format more columnar than that of QlikView. However, the inference engine is still the same (green, white, and gray). The script syntax is still the same; in fact, we can use QlikView scripts in Qlik Sense. The frontend is very different because it is based on a new web design, but the expression syntax is still the same.

Therefore, much of what is written in this book about QlikView will still apply to Qlik Sense. Anyone who masters QlikView will be well on their way to mastering Qlik Sense.

Chapter 1, Performance Tuning and Scalability, is where we look at understanding how QlikView stores its data so that we can optimize that storage in our applications. We will also look at topics such as Direct Discovery and testing implementations using JMeter.

Chapter 2, QlikView Data Modeling, looks in detail at dimensional data modeling and learning about fact and dimension tables and using best practices from Ralph Kimball in QlikView. We also learn about how to handle slowly changing dimensions (SCDs), multiple fact tables, and drilling across with document chaining.

Chapter 3, Best Practices for Loading Data, is where we look at implementing ETL strategies with QVD files. We also introduce QlikView Expressor.

Chapter 4, Data Governance, looks at areas such as implementing metadata in QlikView and managing our implementation with QlikView Governance Dashboard.

Chapter 5, Advanced Expressions, is where we look at areas such as the Dollar-sign Expansion, set analysis, and vertical calculations using Total and Aggr.

Chapter 6, Advanced Scripting, looks at optimizing loads, Dollar-sign Expansion in the script, and control structures. We also introduce the concept of code reuse.

Chapter 7, Visualizing Data, is where we look at the historical background to data visualization; we gain an understanding of the human relationship with numbers and learn some good design principles to bring to our applications.

You need a copy of QlikView Desktop, which you can download for free from http://www.qlikview.com/download. After this, you shouldn't need anything else. You can also test the examples in Qlik Sense.

To demonstrate the different techniques and functions, I will usually get you to load a table of data. We do this using the INLINE function. For example:

Load * Inline [
  Field1, Field2
  Value1, Value2
  Value3, Value4
];

This will load a table with two fields, Field1 and Field2, and two rows of data.

Most of the time, this type of table is enough for what we need to do. In a few examples, where I need you to use more data than that, we will use publicly available data sources.

This is not a beginner's book. This book is for anyone who has learned QlikView or Qlik Sense—either from formal training, online resources, or QlikView 11 for Developers, Miguel García and Barry Harmsen, Packt Publishing—and now wants to take their learning to a higher level.

In this book, you will find a number of text styles that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles and an explanation of their meaning.

Code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles are shown as follows: "In the QVScriptGenTool_0_7 64Bit\Analyzer folder there is a ZIP file called FolderTemplate.zip."

A block of code is set as follows:

Sales:
Load * INLINE [
  Country, Sales
  USA, 1000
  UK, 940
  Japan, 543
];

When we wish to draw your attention to a particular part of a code block, the relevant lines or items are set in bold:

Sales:
Load * INLINE [
  Country, Sales
  USA, 1000
  UK, 940
  Japan, 543
];

Any command-line input or output is written as follows:

C:\Program Files\QlikView\qv.exe

New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, for example, in menus or dialog boxes, appear in the text like this: "Click on the Execution tab."

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