Wednesday 26 June 2013

Win a copy of QlikView for Developers Cookbook

Packt have kindly agreed to give away 2 copies of my book.  See the competition page for details:

http://www.qliktips.com/p/competition.html



Stephen Redmond is author of QlikView for Developer's Cookbook
He is CTO of CapricornVentis a QlikView Elite Partner. We are always looking for the right people to join our team.
Follow me on Twitter: @stephencredmond

The one that got away - linking Section Access to multiple dimensions

During the writing of QlikView for Developer's Cookbook, I added a new recipe quite late on but, for one reason or another, it never made it into the final cut.

So, what we have done is to publish this recipe as an article on the Packt website:

   Linking Section Access to multiple dimensions

I hope that you find it useful.


Stephen Redmond is author of QlikView for Developer's Cookbook
He is CTO of CapricornVentis a QlikView Elite Partner. We are always looking for the right people to join our team.
Follow me on Twitter: @stephencredmond

Monday 24 June 2013

Recipes for success

The new book should be ready to purchase in the next couple of days via the Packt site:

http://www.packtpub.com/qlikview-developers-cookbook/book

and shortly thereafter via Amazon, Barnes & Noble and all the usual suspects.

I though that I would publish a list of the recipes that are in the CookBook so that all can see what you are getting.

1.  Charts

- Creating custom pop up labels in a bar chart
- Creating a box plot chart for a simple data set
- Using the wizard to create a box plot chart
- Creating a "Stephen Few" bullet chart
- Creating a modified bullet chart in a straight table
- Creating a bar chart in a straight table
- Creating a Redmond Aged Debt Profile chart
- Creating a waterfall chart
- Replacing the legend in a line chart with labels on each line
- Creating a secondary dimension in a bar chart
- Creating a line chart with variable width lines
- Brushing parallel coordinates
- Using redundant encoding with a scatter chart
- Staggering labels in a pie chart
- Creating dynamic ad hoc analysis in QlikView

2.  Layout

- Changing the default object layout options
- Changing the default selection color scheme
- Modifying the green, white, and gray selection color schemes
- Modifying the green, white, and gray selection color schemes on QlikView Server
- Using containers as an alternative to multi-boxes
- Using the design menus to custom format a cell

3.  Set Analysis

- Using dollar expansion in Set Analysis to enable from-date and to-date selection
- Using alternate states with Set Analysis
- Using Set operators to exclude values from results
- Using Set Analysis with a Date Island
- Using Sets to avoid key tables

4.  Advanced Aggregations

- Using TOTAL to calculate the percentage of total and the percentage of subtotal
- Using AGGR to calculate the percentage of the maximum value
- Using AGGR to resolve a "Sum of Rows" issue
- Creating a dynamic AGGR expression for a Group dimension using Dollar Expansion
- Using RangeMax to return only positive numbers
- Creating a dynamic Part-to-Whole pie chart
- Creating a colored treemap using colormix
- Using RangeSum to calculate a rolling total in a multi-dimension table
- Showing only the top 3 values in a pivot table
- Creating a Statistical Control Chart using Standard Deviation
- Creating a Moving Range chart
- Creating a Control Chart using Moving Range

5.  Advanced Coding

- Extracting QlikView data to a Word report
- Printing reports to PDF using PDFCreator
- Creating a chart using a macro
- Using VBS functions in charts

6.  Data Modeling

- Concatenation of fact tables to avoid loops and synthetic keys
- Creating a Key/Link table in QlikView

7.  Extensions

- Creating a simple HTML extension
- Creating a simple HTML table
- Creating an interactive extension
- Using external libraries with extensions

8.  Useful Functions

- Handling null in numeric fields or calculations
- Using Dual to handle period name sort
- Parsing text to numbers and dates
- Calculating Year To Date dynamically
- Labelling a pie chart to replace the legend
- Calculating the lowest or highest value in a range
- Consolidating a date-time value into quarter hourly segments
- Dynamically filtering by From/To dates

9.  Script

- Creating flags in the script
- Replacing IsNull
- Storing and dropping using a subroutine
- Keeping a trace on things
- Using AND Mode in listboxes
- Using Exists and Keep to limit the data load
- Setting the default display format
- Setting the default sort order
- Matching financial periods to dates
- Handling partial reload in the script
- Using Peek and Previous to calculate against loaded records
- Creating a simple Gantt for a dashboard using Interval Match
- Reading users from Active Directory
- Getting a sub-URL using the Table wizard
- Using parameters in Dollar Sign Expansion
- Removing fields with a wildcard
- Handling multiple subfolders in a script

10.  Improving Performance

- Reducing the number of distinct values
- Creating counter fields to avoid Count Distinct
- Creating flag fields to avoid Sum of If and other inefficient expressions
- Denormalizing for performance

11.  Security

- Section Access Gotcha's
- Blocking user access to a field using OMIT
- Making all values available to Admins

There was one additional Security recipe that didn't make it into the final cut - Linking Section Access to multiple dimensions.  This will be released as a free article on the Packt website.


Stephen Redmond is author of QlikView for Developer's Cookbook
He is CTO of CapricornVentis a QlikView Elite Partner. We are always looking for the right people to join our team.
Follow me on Twitter: @stephencredmond

Wednesday 12 June 2013

Squeaky bum time

Sir Alex Ferguson, the most successful football manager in history, often had an interesting turn of phrase.  One of his most famous was the description of that time at the end of season where everyone started to get nervous and excited at the same time - he called it "squeaky bum time".

Well, we are at that stage with my new book!  All of the final drafts are in, the cover design is agreed and the Packt website is now up:

http://www.packtpub.com/qlikview-developers-cookbook/book

It's even listed on Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/QlikView-Developers-Cookbook-Stephen-Redmond/dp/1782179739

I am just waiting now for the pre-final draft layouts.  Once all are agreed, then the book will be sent to the printers for publication.  Once it is sent off, it should be available within 6-7 days.

Would love to see it available before the end of June!

I want to take an opportunity to thank the technical reviewers - Barry Harmsen, Mike Garcia, Ralf Becher, and Steve Dark.  All of these guys have a huge amount of QlikView experience and their comments and suggestions have really helped to round the edges of this book.  They are all awesome!



Stephen Redmond is CTO of CapricornVentis a QlikView Elite Partner. We are always looking for the right people to join our team.
Follow me on Twitter: @stephencredmond