QlikView 11 for Developers电子书

QlikView 11 for Developers

Table of Contents

QlikView 11 for Developers

Credits

Foreword

About the Authors

Acknowledgements

About the Reviewers

www.PacktPub.com

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Instant Updates on New Packt Books

Preface

What this book covers

What you need for this book

Who this book is for

Conventions

Reader feedback

Customer support

Downloading the example code

Disclaimer

Errata

Piracy

Questions

1. Meet QlikView

What is QlikView?

How does QlikView differ from traditional BI?

Associative user experience

Technology

Adoption path

Exploring data with QlikView

Getting QlikView

Navigating the document

Slicing and dicing your data

List-boxes

Selections in charts

Search

Bookmarking selections

Creating a new bookmark

Retrieving a bookmark

Undoing selections

Changing the view

Cyclic Groups

Drill down Groups

Containers

But wait, there's more!

The technology and components behind QlikView

The way the data flows

When QlikView use expands

Create content

Reload, publish, and distribute content

Consume content

Meet HighCloud Airlines

Summary

2. Seeing is Believing

What is a SiB?

Preparing the workspace

Setting up the folder structure

Creating the QlikView document

Creating the app

The requirements

Constructing the data model

What is a data model?

Loading the fact table

Playing with listboxes

Associating additional tables

Structuring the script

Creating the dashboard tab

Creating and positioning the filters and user controls

Optimizing the screen space

Number of flights over time

One chart and multiple analyses with cyclic expressions

Adding a time drill-down group

Top 10 routes

Summary

3. Data Sources

Using ODBC and OLE DB drivers

Installing the drivers

Accessing custom data sources

Third-party custom connectors

Reading table files

Extracting data—two hands-on examples

Extracting data from MS Access

Configuring the driver

How to set up an ODBC connection

Creating the OLE DB connection string

Querying the database

The Create Select Statement wizard

Adding the airport tables

Reloading the script

The resulting data model

Loading a table file

Specifying the file attributes

The CSV attributes

A word on Quoting

Previewing

The transformation step

Refining the input table

Where Clause wizard

The crosstable

The resulting script

QVD and QVX files

QVD files

QVX files

Loading an Inline table

Summary

4. Data Modeling

Dimensional data modeling

Back in the day

Relational databases and ER modeling

Dimensional modeling

The star schema

The snowflake schema

Creating the dimensional model

Dealing with multiple fact tables

Dimensional models in QlikView

The associative data model

Guidelines for table associations

How associations are created

Renaming fields

Renaming fields with the Qualify statement

Avoiding data model conflicts

Dealing with synthetic keys

Creating a composite key

Dealing with circular references

The Table Viewer window

Table information

Field information

Table preview

Table viewer menu

Summary

5. Styling Up

Design requirements

The Document Properties window

The Sheet Properties dialog

Setting the object properties

Caption colors and style

Changing the caption colors

The Color Area and Color dialog windows

Setting the caption font

Setting the content font

Setting the global font

Propagating the object appearance

Setting the default Sheet Object Style

Hiding captions

Working with listboxes

Adding listboxes

The List Box Properties dialog

The General tab

The Expressions tab

The Sort tab

The Presentation tab

The Number tab

The Font tab

The Layout tab

The Caption tab

The Multi Box

The Current Selections Box

Making selections from the Current Selections Box

Adding a Bookmark Object

Aligning and resizing sheet objects

Selecting objects

Moving objects

Resizing objects

Resizing a Multi Box

Aligning sheet objects

Do a little house keeping

Creating and applying a default color map

Defining chart colors

Setting the default color map

Summary

6. Building Dashboards

User types

Dashboard users

Analysts

Report users

Applying the DAR principle to Airline Operations

Document requirements

Creating the Analysis sheet

Adding a new chart

Bar Chart

Additional bar chart properties

Style

Presentation

Expressions and the Edit Expression window

Expressions

The Edit Expression window

Fields

Functions

Variables

Images

The Expression Overview window

Line Chart

Additional line chart properties

Expressions

Style

Presentation

Combo Chart

Container

Scatter Chart

Button

Statistics box

Creating the new Dashboard sheet

Linked Objects

Gauges

Cloning the object for re-use

Adding Air Time %

More Gauge styles

Adding a Text object

Using a Text Object to display an image

Adding actions to a Text object

Adding a Pie chart

Dimension Limits

Adding the dimension value to the data point values

Creating the Reports sheet

Variables

The Expression Overview window in action

Copying sheets

KPIs per airline, origin, and destination country

Cyclic and Drill-down groups

Straight table

Not all expressions are numbers

Pivot tables

Auto minimize

The Report Editor window

Other charts

Radar Chart

Mekko Chart

Grid Chart

Funnel Chart

Block Chart

Trellis Chart

Summary

7. Scripting

The Script Editor

Menu and toolbar

Script pane

Tool pane

Script statements

Building the aircraft dimension table

Loading the aircraft information

Adding the aircraft groups

Loading the second aircraft table

Making it all right

Manipulating tables

The JOIN statement

The KEEP statement

The CONCATENATE statement

The NOCONCATENATE statement

Using MAPPING tables

Adding comments

Storing tables

Renaming tables and fields

Deleting tables and fields

Setting variables

Controlling script flow

Conditional functions

Dealing with different data types

Strings

String operators

String functions

Numbers and numeric functions

Date and time functions

Debugging script

Syntax check

Saving logs to disk

The script debugger

Using breakpoints

Limited load

Tracing script

Standardizing and organizing script

Using tabs

Comments

Adding an information tab

Script layout

Naming conventions

Table naming conventions

Field naming conventions

Re-using scripts

Subroutines

Including script files

Managing file locations and connection strings

Summary

8. Data Modeling Best Practices

Data consistency

Dealing with dimensions without facts

An alternative approach

A solo exercise

Dealing with facts without dimensions

Reducing storage requirements

Using number-based key fields

Removing unused fields

Splitting high-cardinality fields

Design challenges of data modeling

The Airline Employment statistics table

Concatenating fact tables

Structural asymmetry

Natural and forced concatenation

Natural concatenation

Forced concatenation

Concatenating the Employment Statistics table

Working with link tables

A link table example

Creating a link table in the Airline Operations document

Finding a balance

The master calendar

A final note on data modeling

Summary

9. Basic Data Transformation

Changing the source table structure

"Cleansing" a dirty table

File contents

Working with the Transformation Step wizard

Throwing out the garbage

Unwrapping table contents

Filling missing cells

The final result

Other transformation tricks

Loading a Crosstable

A Crosstable example

Working with the Crosstable Wizard

A solo exercise

Expanding a hierarchy

A hierarchy example

Working with the Hierarchy Wizard

The tree-view list-box

Generic load

Loading a generic table into QlikView

Summary

10. Advanced Expressions

Using variables

Creating a variable

Using variables in charts

Interactively changing a variable's value

Using the Input Box object

Using the Slider object

Using variables based on expressions

Using variables to store expressions

Variable naming convention

The Dollar Sign Expansion syntax

Dollar Sign Expansion with parameters

Double Dollar Sign Expansion

Using the TOTAL qualifier

The Aggr function

Using Aggr for nested aggregation

A word on calculated dimensions

Aggregations over the Aggr output

A word on using the Distinct qualifier

Getting the Average Load Factor per Route per Airline

Conditional functions

The If function

The syntax

A use case

Heat charts

A solo exercise

Building a heat chart with the Colormix wizard

Numeric versus text comparisons

The Class function

A solo exercise using the Class function

The Pick function

Using Pick with Dimensionality

A tip on copying expressions

Summary

11. Set Analysis and Point In Time Reporting

The magic of Set Analysis

What is it for?

Syntax and examples

Using variables in set expressions

Dynamic record sets

More assignment operators

Set operators

Using element functions

Point In Time Reporting

The challenge

Defining the set modifiers

Obtaining the base period record set

Obtaining the compare-to period record set

Constructing the expressions

Enabling additional period comparisons

More Point In Time Reporting examples

Storing set expressions into variables

Set expressions with parameters

Portable set expressions

Set variables and the Master Calendar

Comparative analysis with alternate states

A comparative analysis example

Alternate states step-by-step

State-based expressions

Combining alternate states and the default state

Applying alternate states to layout objects

Document navigation with alternate states

Clearing selections in an alternate state

Always validate

Summary

12. Advanced Data Transformation

Data architecture

Two-stage architecture

Three-stage architecture

Setting up our environment

Loading data already stored in QlikView

Cloning a QlikView data model

Loading from RAM

Resident load

Aggregating data

Aggregating the Flight Data table

The Transformation output

Aggregation functions

Sorting tables

Ordering the Order-By fields

The Peek function

Merging forces

A refresher

The objective

Getting it done

Loading the table

Sorting the table

Peeking previous records

A solo exercise

Dealing with slowly changing dimensions

The Carrier Decode table

IntervalMatch magic

Expanding the intervals

Some considerations

Applying IntervalMatch to the Carrier Decode table

Ordering, peeking, and matching all at once

The use case

Incremental loads

Summary

13. More on Visual Design and User Experience

Creating a consistent QlikView UI

Screen resolution

Background image

Themes

Applying themes

Creating themes

Adding document properties

Adding sheet properties

Adding sheet object properties

A solo exercise

Additional interactivity

Triggers

Document triggers

Sheet triggers

Actions

Advanced search expressions

A solo exercise

Dynamic bookmarks

Alerts

Conditionally showing and calculating objects

Summary

14. Security

Hidden script

Section access

Section access fields

Reduction fields

Initial data reduction

Omitting fields

Document-level security

Sheet-level security

Summary

Index