What this book covers
Chapter 1, Meet QlikView, introduces QlikView and shows how it can be used to explore data. We will also learn about the technology and components behind QlikView and will be introduced to the case that is used throughout the book: HighCloud Airlines.
Chapter 2, What's New in QlikView 12, presents a summary of the changes in the QlikView software, as well as in the Qlik ecosystem in general, that happened since the previous version of this book was published in 2012. In this chapter, we will bring you up to speed with the changes over the past few years.
Chapter 3, Seeing Is Believing, help us get hands-on with QlikView by building a simple QlikView document. We will learn what dimensions and expressions are, in the context of a QlikView document. We will also learn how to build simple charts to visualize and aggregate data, and how to design a basic user interface for navigating through the QlikView document.
Chapter 4, Data Sources, will help us learn how to load data from different sources and how to extract data using the built-in wizards. We will also take a closer look at QlikView's proprietary data files.
Chapter 5, Data Modeling, explains which type of data model is best suited for QlikView. We will see which rules need to be followed when designing a QlikView data model, and will also learn how best to take advantage of the associative data model to make our documents highly dynamic.
Chapter 6, Styling Up, will help us learn how to style our QlikView documents. We will learn about the various document and sheet properties and will use them to manage the visual style of our document. We will also take a closer look at some of the most fundamental objects and learn how we can change their appearance.
Chapter 7, Building Dashboards, introduces us to the three basic types of QlikView users, and how we can best cater to their needs. We will learn about the various charting options that are available in QlikView, and will see how we can add interactivity to our QlikView documents. We will also be introduced to basic calculations.
Chapter 8, Scripting, introduces us to the QlikView scripting language and editor. We will learn about the most important script statements, and how we can use them to manipulate data and control the flow of the script. We will also be introduced to some of the most important operators and functions for dealing with various data types. Finally, we will look at the options for debugging scripts, how to organize and standardize script, and how we can reuse our scripts.
Chapter 9, Data Modeling Best Practices, expands on the knowledge about data modeling and scripting we gained in earlier chapters. We will learn how to make sure that data models are consistent and how to work with complex data models and multiple fact tables. We will also learn how to reduce storage requirements for a dataset and how best to deal with date and time information.
Chapter 10, Basic Data Transformation, focuses on how to deal with unstructured data and how to transform it for use in our QlikView data model. We will learn about basic data transformation subjects, such as cleansing data and how to restructure pivoted and hierarchical tables for inclusion in the QlikView data model.
Chapter 11, Advanced Expressions, discusses the use of variables. We will also learn how to use conditional functions and how to handle advanced aggregations.
Chapter 12, Set Analysis and Point In Time Reporting, takes a closer look at Set Analysis and will explain how it can be used for Point In Time Reporting. We will also learn about comparative analysis using alternate states.
Chapter 13, Advanced Data Transformation, returns to the topic of data transformation. We will learn about the most commonly used data architectures that can ease QlikView development and administration. Next, we will take a close look at aggregating and sorting data in the data model. In the final part of the chapter, we will learn how to take advantage of some of QlikView's most powerful data transformation capabilities.
Chapter 14, More on Visual Design and User Experience, takes another look at the visual design of our QlikView documents, and will learn how to create a consistent user interface. The second part of the chapter introduces us to some additional manners of adding interactivity to our documents.
Chapter 15, Security, shows how to secure our QlikView documents. We will see how we can allow only authorized users to open our documents and will learn how we can limit what a user can do and see within our document.
