QlikView Overview

Qlikview Reference Manual

QlikView is an In-memory BI Pioneer

In-memory is important for performance, but it takes a lot more to deliver a Business Discovery platform. Traditional BI based on queries and cubes may run in memory for faster response time, but they still require IT to manually maintain the data associations users depend on.

It’s what QlikView does with in-memory technology that really makes a difference.
The QlikView Business Discovery platform:

1)Has an inference engine that maintains the associations in the data automatically
2)Calculates aggregations on the fly, as needed, for a super-fast user experience
3)Compresses data down to 10% of its original size to optimize the power of the processors
4)Accomplishes both within a single, comprehensive product


When a QlikView document is published on a QlikView Server, the content it contains becomes available for consumption by any user with privileges to access it.

QlikView works like this:

• When a user first opens a QlikView document, data is loaded in memory. The compressed and unaggregated dataset is loaded off the disk and into the QlikView Server’s RAM (random access memory). This in-memory repository serves as the
base dataset for this initial user and all other users requesting the same document.
This repository stays in memory until no user activity has occurred within a defined
time-out period.

• Users explore data via selections. Central to QlikView is the concept of a user-defined selection state. As users click around in a QlikView document, they indicate which subsets of data they are interested in analyzing and which subsets should be ignored. QlikView takes advantage of the highly indexed nature of the unaggregated dataset. QlikView dynamically presents a subset of all the data available to the QlikView document based on the selection state. This happens in real time as the user executes clicks.

• Upon selection, aggregates render instantly. On the fly, QlikView renders aggregates as intuitive and interactive user interface objects: charts, graphs, tables,etc. Users interact with objects in QlikView documents through any supported client.Users can create their own objects using the collaboration features of QlikView.

A detailed Architecture overview can be found below