Data used in Qlik Sense needs to be in a tabular form, very much like a table in Excel. A column in the table is referred to as a field and every row is a record.
When data is loaded into Qlik Sense, it is stored in the QIX internal database. In the simplest case, the data is just one single table. However, more commonly, the data model consists of several tables with links between them. These define how the different tables relate to each other. It is, hence, a relational model.
In the previous chapter, we saw an example where four tables were used: Customers, Orders, Order lines, and Products:
A simple data model made from four tables
This is in fact the core of a very common business application—a sales analysis based on the registered orders.
The structure is not a coincidence. Rather, the reason why it looks the way it does is that it is a reflection of the real business processes. The relations these four entities have in reality dictate the data model:
A customer...