Review: QlikTech’s QlikView Business Intelligence platform

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February 9th, 2023

Analysts have remarked on QlikView’s user-driven approach to BI, which focuses on ease-of-use for both IT professionals and non-technical users. The suite also differentiates itself from other BI platforms by being wholly based on an in-memory data store. By utilising in-memory, as opposed to traditional disk storage, the BI application can refresh data in real time to support operational BI environments such as monitoring financial transactions.

QlikTech’s main in-memory BI competes with Microsoft SQL Server, PowerPivot, IBM Cognos Express and SAP BusinessObjects Explorer.

QlikView, which is currently on version 10, comes with a set of integrated BI tools designed to create highly interactive applications, dashboards and reports. One of its strengths is that it can combine data from disparate sources, including Oracle, SAP, Salesforce.com, SQL Server and Excel.

It then provides associative search facilities, which the supplier likens to Google’s Instant Search, with the interface highlighting significant relationships in the data. Thirdly, the product offers extensive data visualisation via expandable 2D and 3D charts, tables and graphs.

According to analysts, data visualisation is one of the main features of the platform. During the MP expenses scandal, QlikTech developed a demo application that allowed people to visualise and analyse their MP’s expenses. Steve Dark, an independent QlikView consultant, says: “At the time the scandal was unfolding, the data was being rolled out via QlikView on the web. In the intervening time there has been a huge surge in interest in and use of QlikView in the UK.”