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Alc

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I was wondering if any of the esteemed users on here have had any experience of using Qlik View with Access or other dbs?

I've been informed that my department has a few Qlik View Server licenses, we're just not currently using them.
My manager is toying with the idea of me getting a Qlik View Desktop license and using this software to set up 'dashboards' allowing those with Server licenses to view data from a number of sources. Specifically, multiple Access databases, ODBC connections to various data warehouses, and SalesForce.

From what I've found online, I know Qlik View can do these things, I'm just curious if anyone has any particularly positive or negative experiences of doing so?
 

Minty

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I can only give you about a 1% view on this - I looked into Qlok View and played with it and it looked quite useful for on-premise or VPN dashboards.
A little bit like Power BI.

I thought it looked pretty useful tbh, but didn't have the time to really explore it.
 

Alc

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Thanks, Minty. That's my impression so far.
 

CJ_London

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I used qlik view at a clients about 5 years ago - quite useful but in reality my view was just a 'bigger' version of access in allowing connections to multiple data sources (we were connecting to sql server, access and excel). It does multiple connections better and has the support of IT (it is under their control!) and is much more focused on business. It probably has better 'wizards' and moved on a lot since then...
 

Alc

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Thanks CJ.
It's the multiple sources bit that my manager noticed. We use Salesforce in conjunction with other sources and it would be nice to access the data directly.
 

CJ_London

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providing you have the permissions, you can do it from access. Salesforce is a bit of a forest - I didn't get into salesforce developing 'queries' as such, but created reports which could be downloaded. All depends on your permissions
 

Alc

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....aaaaand there's our current problem. We have permission to go into salesforce and run reports. Nothing else.

I'm coming to the end of a two year battle that's resulted in them exporting a load of data for us on a daily basis, creating a few CSV files which I then import at our end, just so we can run the analysis we need.

Switching to salesforce cost a fortune and I've yet to meet anyone here who's happy with the end result apart from the CR team who are happy the restrictions on various fields have been removed during data entry, so they now no longer have to worry about not typing text into a numeric field, or vice versa.
[End Rant]
 

Minty

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My Better-half has to use it and hates it, so I don't think you are alone.
I thought you could link to it if you have the permissions required, but if they won't let you then you are hoisted...
 

CJ_London

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bearing in mind my experience is a few years old and things might have changed.

There was no issue with extracting reports from Salesforce except you often could not get the PK - you might get the customer PK, but you couldn't get the salespersons PK as primary contact (or the other way round). Their philosophy (as with many corporate systems) is that it is going to be used in Excel and is for 'one time use', not for mirroring records in another db.

My requirement was to determine sales commissions - I needed links into systems for HR, Legal, Billing and Salesforce plus a couple more. Primarily I needed to know who was managing a client on the day a sale was made, determine if commission was payable and if so, how much. This data used to be stored in Billing but when salesforce was introduced it became system master for client ownership (and sales organisation structure which was a whole other ballgame). That gave me two problems - 1) I no longer had a strong link between customers in billing (which was required to be system master for it to work) and customers in salesforce and 2) reports would only give me the current salesperson, not the one managing the client at the time.

Customers were very dynamic, business gaining many new customers daily, salespeople also swapped client management on a very regular basis (high 100 events every month).

Solved it in the end but a classic case of corporate systems not communicating with each other. Had to run daily reports which maintained a history table and raised exceptions where there were unmatched records in saleforce or billing. And modified business rules to say commission is paid the the salesperson who managed the account at 1 second past midnight on the day of a sale.
 

CJ_London

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We have permission to go into salesforce and run reports. Nothing else.
mean't to respond to this. If you have access to Qlik View, you might find IT will be more responsive to widening your permissions.
 

NauticalGent

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As fate would have it, I participated in a phone conference regarding the fate the Access Applications currently on some DoD Systems. We are being migrated to Azure and they are not willing to allow us to use Azure SQL or even SQL Server.

US Gov IT departments HATE Access and are mandated to NOT support it. Yet is available on every computer and they have no answer on how to provide anything that comes close to what it can do...until now.

The CIO on the call suggested to us that if we wanted to stay relevant on this contract, we should look into Qlick. Never heard of it and did some google searches and decided to check here as well.

Looks like I am embarking on a new journey...
 

Pat Hartman

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I love seeing my tax dollars at work wasting MY money:(

"Access" is NOT a DATABASE engine. It is a Rapid Application Development tool that accesses ANY RDBMS that provides ODBC connections so most companies already have, on EVERY desktop, the tool they need to create dashboards that peek into all their existing systems should they choose to use it. Instead, management keeps getting sold shiny new things.
 

NauticalGent

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Couldn't agree more. Frustrating...but the are willing to fund any training I take up to and including the @#$# CompTia Sercurity Cert that I already paid for out of pocket.
 

Isaac

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....aaaaand there's our current problem. We have permission to go into salesforce and run reports. Nothing else.

I'm coming to the end of a two year battle that's resulted in them exporting a load of data for us on a daily basis, creating a few CSV files which I then import at our end, just so we can run the analysis we need.

Switching to salesforce cost a fortune and I've yet to meet anyone here who's happy with the end result apart from the CR team who are happy the restrictions on various fields have been removed during data entry, so they now no longer have to worry about not typing text into a numeric field, or vice versa.
[End Rant]
Have you tried installing Salesforce's ODBC driver? Although you might have limited permissions online, you still may be able to view data via ODBC. Not sure but might be worth testing.
US Gov IT departments HATE Access and are mandated to NOT support it.

You know those "glorified" finance/accounting/insert name of dept you have found this to be true on here - departments that know JUST enough tech development skills to be dangerous? They run a SQL query and the lights dim, for example? Usually pretty handy with Excel macros, maybe have an Access db sitting around for query purposes, etc - anybody know what I'm talking about?

Well, I've had 2 jobs where that kind of thing was proliferated quite a bit. Super Users with too much access to develop stuff, introducing TONS of totally uncategorized, unrecognized, unmitigated risk into the organization by people taking a hobby approach to development and failing to appreciate the serious approach it requires.

Because of those experiences, I came to kind of empathize with the way I.T. sees Access. You have to remember it's not as much Access they hate, it's the fact that to them Access is the embodiment and representation of all the sloppy, super-user, hobbyist developer--level things they have had to deal with the fallout from.

Of course, as Access developers who take a serious academic approach to development in general, we do our best to prove them wrong and create quality apps that show them there is a whole 'nother side to Access - that's the goal, anyway. I wrote more about this phenomenon here. The list of reasons why I.T. hates Access is a long and valid one, unfortunately I.T. doesn't often see the good side of it demonstrated, so......
 

Pat Hartman

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General purpose tools like SalesForce that claim to be all things to all people are not good at anything and because they are designed for general functionality, they are prone to allowing in bad data.
 

NauticalGent

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Just got of a phone call with the (not so) Wise Men. Looks like Power App and Dataverse is my future....
 

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