The Qlik? way

Qlik has tried to solve all the drawbacks discussed in the preceding section by doing things differently.

First of all, you click and view. You don't need to formulate your question or tell the system more specifically what you want to look at. You just click, and by that, you say, "Tell me more about that…". Then you look at the calculation, KPI, or the field that might be interesting.

Color coding

The color coding defines the answer. Some things are associated with what you clicked on, and they remain white. Others that are not associated become gray. The color coding is for simplicity. The user quickly gets an overview and understands how things work.

Showing the excluded reveals the unexpected, creates insight, and creates new questions. Hence, the gray color is an important part of making the Qlik experience an associative one—a data dialog and an information interaction—rather than just a database query. Showing you that something is excluded when you didn't expect it means answering questions you didn't ask. This surprise creates new knowledge in a way that only a true data discovery platform can.

Freedom of data navigation

Via the associative experience, a user has total freedom to navigate through data and make any combination of selections. Any number of values can be selected. No drill-down paths need to be predefined. This allows the user to follow their own train of thought instead of someone else's. Start anywhere and just follow your intuition.

This total freedom when exploring data is really the core attribute of data discovery.

Calculation on demand

Further, no numbers need to be precalculated. Via the QIX engine, QlikView and Qlik Sense calculate everything on demand, usually in a fraction of a second. The short response time allows the user to have a conversation with the data, where one answer leads to the next question, which in turn leads to next, and so on. Only this way can you interact with data so that you learn from it.

The developer does not need to anticipate all questions that the user will pose. All they need to do is to create a logical, coherent data model, and Qlik Sense will be able to answer the question correctly:

The stack (ETL-Data Store / Engine-UI) is replaced by a single integrated environment. This makes it possible to develop applications in close cooperation with the users, and it can often be done by the users themselves. Feedback is implemented instantaneously and the changes can be evaluated just seconds later. This shortens the development cycle and ensures that the application meets the user demands much sooner than it would otherwise.

This stepwise implementation is crucial for the success of a business intelligence project. It is also the core of modern agile methodologies that are used in all types of software development.

With Qlik Sense, all BI stack functions are integrated into one tool

The development of business intelligence applications must be done as close to the user as possible to enable user feedback and short development cycles. It does not necessarily imply self-service capability, although it is good if this capability exists.

With the introduction of Qlik Sense, the groundbreaking work continues by enabling a new class of users who are highly mobile and require greater self-service capabilities. In Qlik Sense, the self-service capability has become a core feature. Users can define new graphs and visualizations that the app developer didn't think of. This functionality empowers the users even further.

With Qlik Sense, it has also become easier to share your findings and communicate them. This is something that is necessary in all environments where human interaction is important, which is pretty much everywhere.