Best Practices

Approach
to QlikView Development
A.Rajendran
QV Practice Group
Team Computers
 Keep the purpose in Context

• Enabling Everyone to Manage Intelligently

– Manage Teams
– Manage Self

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 The Need:
Continuous Intelligent Management

• Pain Management
– IT - Saving Time, Improve Quality
– Business - Timely Accurate Visibility of Exceptions

• Growth Management
– Identify Growth Opportunities
– Plan to benefit from Opportunities
– Monitor Constantly
– Make Course Corrections

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 Defining Needs Clearly

• Definition of the Purpose - Pain / Growth Area

• Key Metrics for monitoring (KPIs)
• Visual Representation of KPIs
• Frequency of Viewing
• Validation Process and Reference Data

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 Development & Deployment Process

• ETL
– Three stage: Extraction, Unified Data Repository (UDR), Business
Rules, Visual Applications
• Data Modeling
– Star Schema, Relationalization, Unified Data Model (UDM), Integrated
Applications
• Applications
– DARS – Dashboards, Analytics, Reports, Scenarios (What-Ifs)
• Deployment
– License Planning, Servers, Clustering, Performance Management

Detailed Best Practice Documents Available for each of the above

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 Data Modeling Process

• Star Schema Design – Thinking

– Identify the fact tables and the look up tables

• Is SQL the only technology for reporting?

– In-Memory Analytics – thinking habits need to change

• Handling Fact Tables

– Start with one fact table

– Add Multiple FACT TABLES with

• Keys
• Concatenate / Join
• Link Tables
– Incremental Load

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 Star Schema with In-Memory Tools

• Identify attributes that are present in each fact record

• Define categories of these attributes: Geography, Product,

Person, Customer, Vendor, Industry, Period (Dates)

• Each of these categories are potentially a dimension group

– Hierarchical ones - like Geography - can be DRILL GROUPS

– Non-hierarchical ones - like Product categories - can by CYCLIC

GROUPS

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 Creating Visual Interfaces

• Define the first sheet with all the attributes added – as a Template

• Copy these objects to all the sheets and create more sheets:

• Visual Representation Approaches

– Distributions – various ‘-wise’ views
– Trends – various ‘time based’ views

• Dashboard Sheets
– Dial Gauges, LEDs, Small Charts, etc
– Create Role Based Dashboards – every role requires to view different KPIs

• List of KPIs needed change over time. Even their definitions change

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 Dashboard

• The key metrics that are of interest to the users, can be

presented as a summary on the main sheet - called the
dashboard
• Use dial gauges, LEDs, short charts, etc., on this
dashboard page
• Create Role Based Dashboards – every role requires to
view different KPIs
– Simplicity vs. Complexity
• List of KPIs needed change over time. Even their
definitions

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 Concluding Remarks

• Process Driven Needs Definition is the Key

• Planned Validation is an important success factor
• Enhanced ETL, Modeling and Visualization methods available
• User based needs and deployment planning is essential
• Best Practices available for every step – demand for best
practices to be implemented

• Best Practice – Review of Progress of Usage of Applications

Created
• KPI: How Much we have increased Intelligent Management of
Business at all levels?

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