Shlomi Lavi /
Dec 26, 2022
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Bottom Line: Which is Better - Qlik Sense or Tableau Server?
Qlikview vs. Tableau
About the Providers
The original company, Qlik, came in 1993. It rolled out its business intelligence product, Qlikview, when Lars Bjork became the CFO in 2000. It provides top of class virtualization software for business reporting and currently has a customer base of 34,000 in about 100 countries.
Christian Chabot, Chris Stolte and Pat Hanrahan founded tableau in 2003. It is based out in Seattle, Washington. It provides an interactive data visualization product focused on business intelligence.
Ease of Use
Why does one need Analytics? The visual elements play a major role in getting your audience to listen to you and have more clarity and comprehension to rather complex business scenarios.
Qlikview can be deployed and configured in no time and accurate reports can be generated by the unique drag and drop functionality within few minutes. Since there are no data cubes here, it takes a lot of memory to take note of tables and charts to enable queries. End users do not need too much of training to use Qlikview, as the interface is intuitive.
Tableau also boasts of a unique drag and drop facility, which is patent to all cloud solutions these days. Users tend to simply connect the data cubes (so no memory eating here), and hence faster reports. Its intuitive design in drag/drop is much faster than Qlikview.
Reliability
Data can be lost when cubes are used in interactive business intelligence tools. Hence, Qlikview stands a little ahead in the race, as there are no info cubes. The design of the info cubes may vary on the level of customization on the original ERP software, for e.g., Oracle, SAP etc. Qlikview tends to take data directly from the tables stored in the ERP software vide extensive API, increasing its integration capabilities, and hence churns out stunningly accurate reports. The support thing is on the better side than Tableau. It has a Qoncierge application wherein there are many self-help articles and video tutorials.
Tableau, though newer in the market, have also great integration with parent ERP system, but the data cubes have to be extensively and wisely configured, only then the user can have reliable and trust-worthy data. Tableau also provides technical support over chat, web and email. It also provides classroom training for better usage of Tableau across the organisation.
Speed
Tableau gives more detail to dashboards and actions and removes detailed level description at each row. The keyboard shortcuts also help faster dashboard viewing. It removes many columns from the daily reports, which reduces refresh time or custom SQL query time. Users can work upon a sub set of a data, keeping memory intake low.
When the number of rows increases in Qlikview, the I/O operation reduces the filters and selections inside the reports, making it extremely sluggish for some time. Once hit by a bug in the server itself, the system will seemingly take more time.
Features
Qlikview provides an integrated bundle of BI tools, demos, training modules and tutorials, with an aim to fascinate top-level management. As said earlier, there are no cubes, hence, direct memory comes into picture and enables creation of interactive reports. It also enables ad-hoc reporting in a non-hierarchical structure. It has an in-built data model, which allows instant manipulation of massive data sets and sub sets. It is extremely flexible and can be modified to the tune of the usage and it can be further modified as per requirements in few seconds. What drives Qlikview is the single architecture of dashboards, power analysis and simple reporting. What is more interesting is that Qlikview provides interactive and predictive analytics. The What-If analysis is beyond par and gives out efficient analytical data. The menu tabs follow no logical structure. The charts and diagrams are excessive, which are redundant in nature, like 3D charts, gauges and faded bar charts, etc. There are no community development tools available in Qlikview. It would have been an added advantage with social streaming, becoming the need of the hour.
To have diverse and virtual insights coupled with data driven comprehension, is what Tableau provides. It has word clouds and data bubbles like features, which catch the visual eye. There is a tree map, which provides context to graphics. They relate multiple proportions, which are related to each other at one single place. Users can create and lay dashboards overlapping each other, which saves too much screen space. It is a big win for Tableau. The reports are drilled down to the last level, which helps in microanalysis of data. You can also seamlessly share dashboards across the organisation and let others make a note of their doings. It can also offer instant connection to about 30 data types and supports data cubes. The mapping of data within sets (sets ~ subsets) is easy and excellent. The community building efforts have taken a front end with Tableau.
Security
Qlikview does have the single sign on facility and when combined with an Active Directory server, it gives additional SSL layer of security. They also have a HTTPS server, which gives authentic access to the servers. The document metadata services allows document level authorisation.
Tableau authenticates access through Windows NT. It comes with an embedded password and credentials are thoroughly checked for the user. You can create connection vide OAuth 2.0 industry standard. Enabling Kerberos Delegation can allow additional protection at data and document level.
Summary
The Tableau has come up with great intuitive techniques to enable powerful decision-making system. It has tremendous capability to apply filters and drilling down data to the last mile, but Qlikview helps in consolidating selected data from multiple data sources and throwing them at one place for easy viewing of entire business analytics. It specialises in big data without the need of too many customizations, resulting in data linkage between big data and traditional data seemingly easy. It paves the path for the organisation to reuse scalable data at an enterprise level and provide an integrated stand-alone Business Intelligence Platform.