QlikView Reviews

The associative/relationship engine and fast performance are the most valuable features of the product for me. It is excellent for number crunching with basic visualizations and known questions.

QlikView is used internally for financially-focused groups. It has moved folks out of Excel land into interactive/shared analytics.

I would like to see improved performance/scalability at high data volumes + high user concurrency. Having only in-memory capability for hosting source data is a constraint.

I have been using QlikView for 2.5 years.

No issues with deployments/stability. Departmental-scope in use has it well-positioned here.

Technical support is very good.

Nothing else was reviewed, given the business area lead had previous experience with QlikView and wanted that for his department.

Initial setup is straightforward. It is not a complex system to install.

We used a regional vendor that had experts in the platform to help us install/configure/jumpstart our use, working directly with the business department in need.

ROI is unknown. However, licensing costs continue to increase in QlikView and in Tableau, which we also use, forcing us at some point to consider consolidating to one and/or turning some existing/owned MicroStrategy licensing inward to replace if the the upward pricing trend continues.

Pick the right tool for the job/consumers of the products. There is not a single product that can cover all personas/use cases well or there would be only one product out there commanding the world – and there’s simply not just one. QlikView is great for numbers-focused users who live in Excel today and want a better way to create common metadata and analytics that can be easily distributed/consumed by target users.

QlikView’s associative ability. The AQL that QlikView uses to associate and ‘bring together’ similar data types (based on name) is extremely powerful and useful. One click causes a whole ripple effect though the whole dashboard, because everything is associated to one another.

We have used code to create a calendar effect. We then loop through that calendar, executing SQL at the end of each month. This is not easy to mimic in normal SQL, and would require an SQL package to perform such a thing.

QlikView allows us to perform these feats with ease.

QlikView does not work very well with very large data sets. I would like to see that improved.

I have used this product since Jan 2013.

Besides the stability issue with large data sets, I have not encountered any other deployment, stability or scalability issues.

Technical support is 3/10.

I have not evaluated any solution similar to QlikView (e.g. Tableau).

We did not previously use a similar solution.

Initial setup was straightforward.

A vendor team implemented it. They knew the tool best and we could get it up & running a lot quicker. Part of the implementation included training.

Not easy to answer. What we use it for, internal to the company, is to track internal costs as we manage quite a number of cost centers. We've successfully managed our budgets and have recovered quite a substantial amount of money for our CC as QV has allowed us to track incorrect CC billing.

QlikView really works well. We have had no complaints from users about its functionality. There has never (or hardly) been a time where a user makes a comment like “Oh, pity that QlikView can't do this…”

I'm using the product for traffic purposes, leads, and some users. It's about the approval ratio. I'm using data to see what I want to see and based on this, I'm creating some reports for myself and management. Whatever I want to see, whenever I want to look something up, I can do so with this product.  

If we have an FTD, we can see when this FTD came in. This is very, very important for me and for our team to see how the actual FTD came in and when, as, for our department, we are building campaigns for traffic. If we have an FTD that registers today and deposits today, this is different than another scenario where we have when leads from last year that are deposited today. The faster I can see this, the more helpful it is. This is a key feature for me.

It's easy to use in terms of navigation. Once you open it up, you see everything that you can do. You can see what filters you have to choose from right at the beginning, on the first page.

Sometimes the filters are disappearing, and I'm not sure why this is happening. It might be when it's refreshing or updating. I'm not sure. For example, maybe when I'm doing a report and it's refreshing, I can see that all my filters are gone and I need to start again from the beginning. This is the main issue for me.

I've used the solution for one year and six months. 

For the past year and six months, it has been very stable. The numbers are correct as far as I can see. Based on this, reports are created. We haven't had an issue. It's reliable. 

We have 30 or 40 people using the solution currently.

I'm not sure of total scalability, however, based on the scalability of the data, of course, it has a lot of scalability available since we have thousands of FTD leads. We need scalability. So far, we haven't had a problem achieving it. 

That said, if the solution can scale according to the number of users, I'm unsure.

As of now, project coordinators and the business intelligence team are using it. 

I don't have any communication with technical support.

I'm using Qlik Sense as well. It's something very similar. It's just some different places that you're going to have. You're going to find some different filters, however, at the end of the day, it's very similar.

I didn't handle the initial setup and I'm just the one user. 

I'm an end-user of the product.

I'm not sure which version of the solution we're using at this time. 

My advice to everyone that is using QlikView that's a beginner is to check every page that it has. When I started using it, after one or two months, I found a lot of pages that were very important for the company. If I knew they were there from the beginning, I would have checked those pages instead of using only one or two things. Every page has very important info.

I'd rate the solution at an eight out of ten.

Ability to connect and transform data from a variety of sources into the same application. From an analytical development perspective, there is a wide scope to create complex calculations within chart expressions, (including recursive expressions), which, combined with the trellis functionality, means more output with less setup effort.

A well designed app brings freedom of inquiry to meetings, allowing me to answer questions in real time and this has transformed progress and outputs of our monthly group meeting.

Finally, it really is a case of data instantly updating upon selection. No more watching an egg timer as a server churns away.

Meetings are now proactive rather than reactive with analysis conducted straight away. We're making better informed decisions - and more of them!

I have automate a complex set of analysis within a matter of days (as a relatively novice user), that had taken weeks, with less useful outputs, in other software.

Syntax editor needs some work, it's frustrating to have valid syntax being flagged as incorrect. It would save time troubleshooting errors that don't exist when the script runs or charts render.

1 year, but not a heavy user - though this will change!

• The in-memory engine is really powerful, making it possible to deal with huge data records on the fly (more than 400 million in a table). I have built data models with over 1 billion records and the performance is good.
• With in-memory calculations at the UI (on the fly), it is possible to build charts, tables, etc. directly on the user interface (UI).
• Cubes are built on the UI. No need to pre-aggregate data, but it is of course possible to do that in the script (which I would not recommend) or better deliver data as SQL-View.
• Scripting possibilities to build complex applications and functionality.
• Web integration capabilities, for ex. you can include JScript Objects or R for better visualization.

We are service providers and built applications for our customers, not for us. Our customers are able to evaluate their marketing campaigns at the aggregated and customer levels. They can use micro-segmentation to select the leads.

We actually use QlikView, which does not allow easy-to-use framework management. There is a deployment framework, which I do not find easy to use and somehow not stable. I hope QlikView can improve this.

I have been using this solution for 3.5 years now.

There is no general rule, but we use the deployment framework, which allows us to produce a QV application user with four different levels of deployment:

• One level for the extraction of the data (1 to 1)
• In the second level, we get the original tables and based on the user requirements, build the data model and make the necessary transformations.
• In the third level, we get an intermediary state of the data model to be loaded in the end-user application.
• The fourth level contains the end-user application. We do a “binary” load, which is a command line in the QlikView script that allows us to copy 1-1 to the application we are copying from, in this case, from the third level. We have separate development from production and testing in a highly reachable environment (cluster environment).

It is stable, but of course stability depends on your IT infrastructure and deployment chosen.

Data model, data size, RAM size, hardware CPUs and UI expressions / charts, are strongly related. It is possible to scale QV without problems, but the issue is more complex than not having enough RAM. Complex expressions at the UI level, single threaded object calculations, complex data models, huge data size, etc., can alter the performance of the QV application and thus we might think we need to scale. There are many tools to measure QV performance and to try keep them at an optimal level. Otherwise, if everything else is fine, we need to increase RAM. Actually, we have 1 TB RAM on our production server.

Technical support is good, but could be improved.

Initial setup was straightforward. You need a server, install QlikView with its web server option and then you can start doing applications.

For more complex architectures (clustered, with two or more servers), you will probably need Qlik Tech support.

We contacted Qlik Tech directly for a cluster implementation (at my current company).

Pricing/licensing depends on your company size, the uses of QV, # of users, among others. Named CALs, at approx. 1.200 EUR (see the Qlik website), would be required if you have permanent users with write access to different applications, while Document CALs are good if you have users that will only see a document to perform their jobs. There is good and simple documentation explaining your best pricing / licensing model.

For my previous company I compared Tibco, QlikView, Tablaeu, and other tools, as indicated in the Gartner Quadrant. We did workshops with them, and were happy with QV because you can build something immediately. In the case of Tablaeu, you need a really well-established ETL and / or views. Otherwise, it is complicated for a normal user to build correct charts. Users have normally very little understanding of the data structure. Other tools need pre-aggregation and a long development process. With QV, it is possible to use views, pre-aggregated or raw data and you can still manipulate the data in the script, i.e. do ETL (see Deployment Framework).

1. Check your user and business requirements first and check if QV can help you solve your user / business needs.
2. If yes, check what are the potential uses of QV and describe the environment, company or unit size, # of users, # of applications, # of KPIs, and data volume. After this first check, you may be able to determine how big would your applications be, and thus estimate current and future RAM, necessary IT Infrastructure, # of servers, etc. I would talk to IT to see how to integrate QV into your IT environment. Many people start with an isolated QV implementation in their unit, which is fast, but then you have no single point of truth (this may discourage adoption because the user does not trust the data). But it depends on your goals.
3. Start working and promote user adoption, showing good functionality, fast implementation, and reliable data. QV can then become the main BI tool in the company.
4. Looking forward, QV can be extended in the use of mash-ups, Jscript extensions and analytics with R, so that you can build up in the future. Qlik Sense is a new Qlik Tech product, which offers many new possibilities.

• KPI's
• Dashboard creation

Powerful, scalable, and a bit addictive, allowing you to "see" your data in ways never thought possible. We can now take medical stats presented in an academic journal and applying them to community-based medicine. This literally changes physician behavior like no other tool.

We were struggling with running application reports, and were spending substantial time, and high-end resources to deliver the basics. Implementing QlikView for our clients also allowed us to aggregate our client-based data and see "What type of reports are they running" "What time of day" "Which users". This data alone allowed us to immediately focus on the points of user experience which would impact the users the most.

Online education, but they are revamping.

I've used it for two years.

No issues encountered.

QlikView is a very heavy RAM utilizer (all strong BI tools are). When we hit around 20 concurrent users, the user experience began to suffer. We contacted Qlik Support and they assisted us with a review of our infrastructure. We followed their suggestions to the tee, and were back with great speed!

It's excellent, and very responsive.

It's excellent.

Simple, low level learning curve.

We did it in-house.

Currently $1 spent = $3 recouped (including labor/support/Infrastructure).

Push for more services in your installation (consulting, IT, Development, Design). Sales can be very creative.

We also looked at Tableau.

Review your end-goals, internally and externally. This can be a powerful tool for your clients but also for internal decision making.

As a BI professional sometimes you have to tackle projects with poor or no documentation at all, just the datasources and some vague requirements. In QlikView it is quite easy build up a first data model (dimensional or not) and use the first stage to understand the entities and relations between it and the business. From there you can explore the business, understand the users real requirements and needs and improve the model with a few changes, without much effort. This is because Qlikview has a very flexible and short cycle of development in each iteration.

For the user QlikView is a wonderful tool of data discovery, providing powerful tools to navigate easily between a sea of data in an intuitive, easy, and clear way, allowing them to go from facts to KPI and vice versa.

Qlikview can be used both as an advanced reporting tool as well as an BI KPI tool, becoming the base for continuous process improvements. In general the benefits of the tool become clear at the early development stage when the user is challenged to input clearly his ideas, problems and needs and that will affect the process in which he participates. Typically in a second iteration the key user will ask for a new release more oriented to advanced KPIs rather than just reports. This is a direct consequence of the process making things clearer and evolving. So the main value supplied by Qlikview is to reduce uncertainty, make the participants question, discover, interact with each other, and eventually improve the process. Properly used should function as an improvement catalyst for the processes involved.

It is well know that the ETL is quite far away from leading products like Data Stagem Informatica and others. Currently Qliktech is working on this problem with Expressor, a powerful graphic dataflow tool. Another area is the licensing scheme, which leaves out many SMO. To remedy this and try to stop the eruption of third parties (e.g: Tableau), QlikTech launched Qlik Sense, although the future is unclear and there may be a possible merge of the two branches (Qlik Sense + QlikView). Finally QlikTech, since release 10/11, leaves the development of new graphic charts to the community with mixed results.

I have using it for the last five years, since 2010 at least.

The deployment of the dashbords, in the simplest scenario, is so easy you just drop a unique file (qvw extension) in the published folder and the solution appears into the main web page that works like an index of all solutions: the access point.

The product has great stability although in some circumstances, especially if it is low in resources or the reload process encounters some kind of dead lock while extracting the data from the DB, it could/will result in the shutdown of the service. The good news is the automatic behavior: I never saw corrupted data or unstable behavior, just restart the service / reload and all works well again.

The product is designed to scale both horizontally and vertically. Some organizatations which have servers and dashboards that handle until 30 Tb of data have had some issues that finally have been addressed by the support service of QlikTech.

The customer service is provided by the local reseller and is fine. We have mainly used it to get the new releases and some support during the installation.

The technical support in my country is provided by the master reseller and it looks good even when they have to pass the case to Qliktech to figure-out the problem and find a solution. In this last case it can be somewhat delayed because these cases needed to reach the top levels of the service.

I have used (and still use) Microsoft BI: SSISm SSAS and SSRS. The productivity level of QlikView is quite superior, whilst Microsoft licensing scheme is really better, specially when there are large number of users and a lot of SQL licences deployed making it (MS) much cheaper.

The initial setup was absolutely seamless and the only requirement for a successful deploy is a little training to the users, not only about how to use QlikView, but what can be done with QlikView, giving them the initial spark.

In general the vendors which I have worked with were very well qualified, although not very inclined to share information easily.

This question is hard to answer because except for a few cases its impossible to measure how the project (not the tool) improves the results of the organization. Such measures are available at the organizational level, but it is difficult to quantify the proportion of the contribution from one tool to a whole process.

The start cost is around of US $25.000 and the annual royalties are around 20% that includes customer and technical support and upgrades.

I have evaluated Tableau and Microstrategy. The first one is too basic (wonderful if you are a final user). The second one: extremely complex, just for very large organizations and large IT teams.

Think seriously about the possible population of users, how it will grow-up, and check the licensing cost and its limitations.

We are a consulting company. Some of my employees use the solution. It is a memory-based BI tool. It works faster than other tools.

The solution is fast.

The tool is expensive in Turkey.

I have been using the solution for two years.

I rate the tool’s stability a ten out of ten.

The tool is scalable. We are working with two big corporations in Turkey.

The deployment took less than one day.

The prices were normal five years ago, but they are expensive now. My customers pay a yearly license fee.

Qlik Sense is easier to use than other tools. It is easy to install.

I recommend the product to others. It is expensive only in Turkey. We suggest to our customers, though. Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.