Associative search in QlikView v.10 list boxes

Okay, I confess I didn’t really “get” this feature when I saw it in the webex demo. But after seeing it again at Q Days in San Diego last week, the lightbulb finally turned on for me.

I’ll do my best to explain it, but I highly recommend that you go check it out yourself at the QlikView v.10 demo site. The application “What’s New in QV10” is a good place to start.

Direct vs. Associative Search

In version 9 a “simple” search function can be achieved by dropping a search object on the page. And then you can configure the properties to search across all fields or narrow it down to specific fields. This is a very effective tool and end-users love it. But it’s not really associative. By that I mean, it’s a direct search; i.e. if I’ve set up the search object to search in the Salesperson field, then I enter some portion of the Salesperson name in the search box. For example, if I know the salesperson’s name is Sharon something, I type “*sha*” and a list of Salespeople with the substring “sha” in their name shows up. Make sense?

But what if I don’t remember any part of the Salesperson’s name, but I remember some other things associated to the salesperson. Like what they’ve sold. Or to whom they’ve sold …

In version 10 associative search, I can search for Salesperson by entering keywords about other fields that are associated to Salesperson (like Customer, Product, etc.) So in the example above, if I couldn’t even remember any part of the Salesperson’s name, BUT I did remember she works in Germany (Business Unit) and sells Milk (Product) and sells to ActiveDesign (Customer) then I can use associative search and hopefully zero-in on her…

A Use Case

This series of screen shots walk through the scenario I outlined above.

Step 1 – I open the search bar on the Salesperson list box (the magnifying glass) and type “germa”

Step 2 – I click on BusinessUnit_EN = GERMANY

Step 3 – I then type “milk” in the same search bar

Step 4 – I click on Product Sub Group = Milk

Step 5 & 6 – Finally I type “activ” in the search bar and click on Customer = ActiveDesign

Step 7 – with these associations, my list box has been reduced to one value – Sharon Carver –> I have my answer!

Step 8 – Optionally, I can explicitly select Sharon Carver and filter my whole model to her for further analysis

A Couple of Points

  • IMPORTANT – the selections you make in the search list do not affect the rest of the model. In other words, when I selected BusinessUnit_EN = GERMANY in the search box, my dashboard didn’t change. (You can watch the Current Selections to verify that.) I suppose that depending on the scenario this could be slightly inconvenient. But I really find it to be useful, because I don’t want to change my model selections…I just want to find Salesperson = Sharon Carver, in this example.
  • I found myself having to type slower than normal in the search box. Not a big deal, but it took a while to get used to. (Maybe it will be more natural in the final v.10 release.)

So…another great feature for end-users coming in version 10!

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QlikView under the hood

One of the great sessions at Q Days 2010 San Diego (yesterday!) was “QlikView Under the Hood,” presented by Daniel English of the Product team.

I’m a scientist at heart and really like to know how things tick. Sure, it’s rewarding to deliver a stunning dashboard to my business partner and hear them say “wow” or “we didn’t have this type of intell before” … but, in the back of my mind I’m wondering “how much RAM is this really consuming?”  🙂

So, this session addressed some questions. The two big takeaways for me were:

  1. QV Server (QVS) caching – if you happen to be sitting around, watching the Perf Mon on your QVS machine you will likely notice RAM activity growing and growing. And then freak out that QVS is leaky. Well, it turns out, this is exactly the correct behavior for QVS. What happens is that when a document is opened, and the user starts clicking or changing tabs, each of those results (aggregations) get cached. And QVS will continue to cache until all the available RAM is consumed or the document times-out from disuse. (Or if the QVS is rebooted – duh.) If another document comes into scope, or another user starts asking different question of the same document, then QVS starts dropping cached aggregates to make room for the new stuff. (How it drops it was not specified – oldest first? or least re-used first?)
  2. “Associative” – what does this really mean? Is it just marketing hype? Without debating the semantics, QlikView’s model is a very unique, very novel concept. Here’s how I think of it, in good old-fashioned SQL terms… Imagine I write a SQL query with every table in my data mart – every fact, every dimension. And I have join conditions to join every table (using a full outer join). And then I start dynamically changing bits of the WHERE clause. That is what associative analysis means. And we change the WHERE clause in QlikView, figuratively speaking, by clicking on selectors.

So yeah, Associative really does mean something different than most SQL query tools. Unless of course your SQL tools allows you to query every table in your mart simultaneously 🙂

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