Design Mode

One of the criticisms of Qlikview that I have heard raised is that there is no design mode - in other words the same environment is used to design models and to use them.

However, QV does have a design mode - of sorts. I didn't know this until recently and stmbled across this indirectly in another blog (sorry, can't remember whose).

To activate design mode, turn on the design grid. On the menu click View | Design Grid or press Ctrl-G to toggle on and off.

OK, so what do I get in this design mode, apart from the grid of course? Well, now I have sizing/moving handles on sheet objects, and some additional context menu items (z-ordering sheet objects, column width aids, interactive sorting and indivdual cell properties)

I said "of sorts" above because it is not a pure design mode like other applications. You can still interact with the model as a normal user, mixed up with the design stuff.

Selection and month views

If you set up a simple month view chart such as a chart of the sum of transaction amounts by day, for example:

• using a dimension such as Day(TransDate)
• using an expression like Sum(TransAmount)

Now, if the user views this chart with no year and month selected, they will get the sum of amounts for that day of the month for all months loaded into the model. Not very useful.

Another approach is to make the chart display summed amounts for the current month. If a selection is made, then display summed amounts for the selected month/year.

This is how I do this:

1. Create TransYear and TransMonth fields on loading
2. Put listboxes with these two fields on the sheet
3. Build the chart
4. Filter the chart expression(s) with the following date filter (added filter highlighted):

Sum(If(TransDate >= MonthStart(Max(Total TransDate)) AND TransDate <= MonthEnd(Max(Total TransDate)), TransAmount)


5. Now, if nothing is selected, the TransDate range will be in the current month (or at least the last month in which a transaction was recorded - in most cases this will be the same date).

If you select a month only, then Max(TransDate) will be the month in the most recent year that contains data for that month. For example, in April: selecting Jan, Feb, Mar or Apr will display data for that month in the current year. Selecting any other month would display data for that month in the previous year.

If you select a year only, then Max(TransDate) will be the last day of that year with transactions. If that is the current year, then that will be today (or yesterday).

Any other selection (of TransDate, TransMonth, TransYear) will cause the month with of the last possible TransDate to be displayed.

You can, of course, do the filtering with a set expression if you prefer. I find this syntax more intuitive, but the final choice should depend on performance. Maybe you would like to convert this to a set expression in a comment below?

Tooltip for buttons

Did you know that QV models can display a tooltip for buttons?

Enter the tooltip text in the Help Text box on the Caption tab of the button properties. If the user hovers their mouse over the button, the text will pop up in tooltip.

This also works for text boxes.

Set Analysis Problem

The problem

To display data in a way that ignores selections, you can use a set expression {1} in any aggregation functions. This is useful for a dashboard page which displays (for example) the last 30 days data. The chart expression could be something like:
=Sum({1} Distinct If(TranDate>=today()-30, TranValue))

I have a chart to display data which must ignore all selections, except one (on a field named ForcedLoadingState, which could contain 'Yes' or 'No'). The problem was how to create a set expression which would ignore all selections except on ForcedLoadingState.

The solution

1. Create a variable (eg vForcedLoadingState).

2. Use the set expression:
{1<ForcedLoadingState={$(=vForcedLoadingState)}>}

3. Define the variable as:
=If(Len(ForcedLoadingState)=0,'Yes,No',ForcedLoadingState)

Comments

This allows the user to see the data unfiltered by ForcedLoadingState (ie no selection) or for either state of ForcedLoadingState. When ForcedLoadingState is unfiltered, the variable will pass both Yes and No as valid options to the set expression. The '1' in the set expression overrides all other selections.

If(Len(field) = 0,..) is equivalent to If(IsNull(field),..), but I have found the Len approach more reliable. Maybe that's just me :-)

If there are more than two valid states, then the variable expression will need to include all the options in a comma separated list. This will work as long as there is a small number of possible options.

Qlikview Log Viewer

I have developed a simple Qlikview model that reads the log files for the Qlikview models in the same folder and shows a simple status dashboard showing the last reload date, success or failure of the reload, the number of reload errors if any and the relative time that the reload took. See image below:


To use, just copy the qvw file into the same folder and enable logging on the models that you wish to monitor, and set this model to reload periodically. If you have a series of models reloading overnight, just ensure that this model runs last.

Clicking on one of the model names displays the log data for the last reload of that model.

The load script is:

SET ThousandSep=' ';
SET DecimalSep='.';
SET MoneyThousandSep=' ';
SET MoneyDecimalSep='.';
SET MoneyFormat='R # ##0.00;R-# ##0.00';
SET TimeFormat='hh:mm:ss';
SET DateFormat='YYYY/MM/DD';
SET TimestampFormat='YYYY/MM/DD hh:mm:ss';
SET MonthNames='Jan;Feb;Mar;Apr;May;Jun;Jul;Aug;Sep;Oct;Nov;Dec';
SET DayNames='Mon;Tue;Wed;Thu;Fri;Sat;Sun';

For each File in filelist ('*.log')

tmpLOG:
REPLACE LOAD
Date#(@1:9, 'MM/dd/yyyy') as Date,
Time#(@10:17, 'hh:mm:ss') as Time,
@20:24 as SourceLine,
RecNo() AS LogLine,
PurgeChar(Trim(@25:n), chr(9)) as Detail,
FileName() AS LogFile,
FileTime('$(File)') AS LogDate
FROM '$(File)'
(fix, codepage is 1252);

Let zStartts = TimeStamp#(Date(Peek('Date', 0), 'yyyy/MM/dd') & ' ' & Peek('Time', 0), TimestampFormat);
Let zEndts = TimeStamp#(Date(Peek('Date', -1), 'yyyy/MM/dd') & ' ' & Peek('Time', -1), TimestampFormat);
Let zInterval = Interval(zEndts - zStartts, 'hh:mm:ss');

Let zFileName = Peek('LogFile');

LOG:
LOAD *,
'$(zInterval)' AS ElapsedTime
RESIDENT tmpLOG
WHERE Len(Date) > 0 AND Len(Detail) > 0;


ERRORLOG:
LOAD
LogFile,
LogDate,
Count(*) AS ErrorCount
RESIDENT tmpLOG
WHERE Detail LIKE 'Error:*'
GROUP BY LogFile, LogDate;

DROP TABLE tmpLOG;

Next File

You may need to tweak the data formats to suit your system.

Load the model here. You will require a licensed version of Qlikview to open this model. If you are using the community download version of QV, you can roll your own by creating a new model, copying and pasting the script above, and importing this XML sheet layout.

The standard free software disclaimers apply.