Architecture Design

In the previous chapter, we learned about requirement gathering. In this chapter, we will see the best methods to architect the entire project from an infrastructure point of view and from a data point of view. This chapter is even more important than other chapters, because the sustainability of a project depends on the topics covered in this chapter.

In this chapter, our primary focus will be about architecting a project in such a way that it can sustain for a long period of time. A project with highly flexible and robust architecture design tends to remain for a long time, and thus it is important to know how to build such architecture.

In this chapter, we will be covering these topics:

• An introduction and importance
• Hardware and software requirements
• Installation architecture
• Backup and restore design
• Data architecture
• Data flow diagrams

...

An introduction and importance

Architecting is nothing more than the art of designing the foundation of the building; the more powerful the designing, the more likely the building will stand strong in any circumstances. The same applies to projects in the IT world. If you design the most optimized architecture of a project, the project is likely to remain for a long period.

We come across cases where a project which started well, after a period, starts falling apart. The primary reason for this is often because it is not architected properly.

When it comes to architecting the Qlik projects, the project manager may not understand the importance of it and may not pay enough attention to architecting the project. There could be reasons for not taking architecting seriously. The main reason is that many project managers are non-technical guys; what matters to them is to finish the...

Hardware and software requirements

We have already seen what parameters are required for hardware infrastructure and seen the required software list. Let us have a look at the minimum hardware and software requirements for Qlik Sense:

CPU	Multi core x64 compatible processor. Recommended minimum 4 cores.
RAM	Minimum 8 GB (Additional as per the data volumes).
HDD	1.5 GB minimum for installation, and additional to store the data and apps. It can also be SAN or network drive.
Operating system	For Qlik Sense server, server operating system Microsoft server 2012 R2 64 Bit or above For Qlik Sense development, any operating system above Windows 7 64 Bit
.NET framework	4.5.2 or above
Security	Any third-party authentication module, like AD or Microsoft integrated windows authentication.
Repository Database	PostgreSQL (By default installed with...

Installation architecture

Now that you know what hardware and software are required, you are good to start with the installation process. But before actually starting the installation process, you should also know what kind of installation will be required as per the requirement is given by the client.

Let us understand a some terminology before considering the types of installation.

Node

Node is nothing but a computer or server which is created to perform a specific role or a combination of roles.

When Qlik Sense is installed, it installs a series of services, which are used to perform respective tasks. For example, the proxy service will be used to do authentication, session handling, and load balancing, whereas scheduler...

Backup and restore design

We all know what backup and restore means and their importance. Generally, it is done for data and systems which are very important and which need continual access.

Though Qlik Sense does not generate any data, it provides critical insights to businesses about their data. The business users depend on the Qlik Sense dashboards for business information and usually they want Qlik Sense to be continuously available. Hence consultant should plan the backup and restore mechanism for Qlik Sense server.

There are a couple of ways in which you can take the backup of the Qlik Sense site.

DR (Disaster Recovery) server setup

A disaster can be anything which causes the Qlik Sense server to go down and lead to...

Example Scenario

Now that we have covered almost all the points which need to be taken care of when deciding the infrastructural architecture, let us look at an example scenario which will help us to understand the topics in more detail.

Let us continue with the same example we saw in the previous chapter, about the company AB Fashion. Requirement gathering has been done and now it is time to decide the architecture which will need to be implemented to make sure that Qlik Sense is available all the time with the high availability of data.

As a consultant, you ask some questions to business and to yourself and find answers to them to decide the architecture. Following are the questions and answers:

Q1: What is the actual data size of the data sources?

A1: The data source is SAP and the expected size is around 300 GB.

Q2: Out of the entire data, how much data will be used for analysis...

Data architecture

Like infrastructure architecture, data architecture is also an important activity which you should plan before starting the project, or make changes as needed during the course of the project. Data architecture involves planning the data fetching from source system, data manipulations and transformation as per the requirement and storing the output in Qlik Data format. This becomes an input for the Qlik Sense application.

Before actually starting to design the data architecture, you should know a couple of important file formats, like QVD (Qlik Sense application) and QVF (Qlik Data Files).

QVF

When you create an application on Qlik Sense Desktop, Qlik Sense creates a file on the machine with .qvf extension...

Example case study

Let us continue the same example of the fictitious company, AB LLC. In the previous step, we had given an estimate of hardware and software to the client. Depending on our input, the client has made available the hardware and all setup has been done successfully.

Let us look at the various input parameters from the client and the best approach for designing the data architecture.

Data Sources

The client has mentioned that they would need data input from multiple sources, like SAP, Excel, and few CSVs:

• SAP: Contains all the transaction data captured from various locations (stores). This data is at a daily level and has information of all the products which the company is selling
• Excel: Excel contains the...

Data flow diagrams

One of the graphical representations used to show the flow of data from source to destination is Data flow diagrams (DFD). DFDs are widely used for visual representation. When it comes to analyzing the process of data handling, DFDs are used to understand the entire structure of the data flow.

Let us understand the importance of DFDs using a simple example. Consider a case when someone decides to build a building. The very first thing he will do is hire an architect, who will analyze the building area and build the blueprint of the building structure. This blue print will be considered the base architecture of the building and the building will be built as per the blue print created by the architect. The importance of making the blue print before starting the actual building is to understand the various aspects of the building, to understand the risk involved...

Example of creating a DFD

Let us see an example of the DFD diagram and look at how to create it.

Assume that we want to show that how the data is extracted from source system and post that a basic transformation happens and we store the result to QVDs.

Summary

We learned various ways in which architecture designs for the Qlik Sense project can be taken care of.

We learned what is meant by architecture and why it is important, especially when it comes to Qlik Sense. We saw that there are two basic kinds of architectures, infrastructure architecture and data architecture. Diving in infrastructure architecture, we saw which parameters need to be considered when deciding the hardware requirement for Qlik Sense project. We also saw the basic software requirement.

Then we started with understanding the deployment architecture and its various aspects, which should be understood before starting architecture design. In this, we look at node, site, single and multi-node architecture and different persistences

Moving forward, we saw the backup and restore strategy. We looked at the various options of taking backups of applications and...