Chapter 3. Are You Sitting Comfortably? Be More Productive

In this chapter, we will cover the following key topics:

• A bit more about license types

• Making yourself comfortable and productive

• Never lose your work

• Some useful global settings

• Some best practices for developers

• Hidden features – Easter eggs

• A few do's and don'ts

A bit more about license types

Qlik provides several ways of licensing the desktop version for developers. In this section, we'll explain the differences and what you as a developer should be aware of.

Background

From a developer's point of view, there are three types of license that will enable you to create and modify QlikView documents. However, only two of them are useful once you pass the initial experimentation stage. The three types we will review here are Personal Edition, Stand Alone (Local Client), and Leased License (Named User).

How to do it

Qlik encourages potential users to try out QlikView by allowing anyone to download a free copy of Personal Edition. This is a full-featured development environment, but its usage is restricted to documents created with this copy of the software along with a handful of QlikView demonstration documents. This means that it is only of use in an environment where you are both the sole developer and user. However, Personal Edition can be upgraded to...

Make yourself comfortable and productive

It's all too easy to just start using the developer environment without really thinking about how to make it work best for yourself.

Background

Before starting on a new development, especially with a new installation of the developer environment, spend a few minutes setting things up to suit your own style and development needs. Simple things such as having more recent items in your start menu can save time as you would not have to navigate your way to a document every time you need to open it. Here, we will explore a few of our favorite settings, all of which can save a little time here and there, making you comfortable and more productive.

It's surprising how much difference a few little adjustments to the developer environment can make to productivity, but don't forget that you want your users to be productive too!

How to do it

You can perform the following steps for this. All the settings in this section can be found in Settings | User Preferences...

Never lose your work

It's happened to all of us. Change the script and reload the document…and the script fails, wiping out all your changes.

Background

For those of you who already write QlikView script, how many times have you made changes to the script and reloaded, only to find that there is an error and the reload has stopped? The document is cancelled and reloaded to an old state, losing your most recent changes. To prevent this annoying problem, there is a simple user setting you can make.

How to do it

Here's what you can do. Select User Preferences from the Settings menu and click on the Save tab. Look for the Save Before Reload checkbox and select it. This will save all your changes before the script reloads, and they will still be there even if the script fails:

There are a couple of extra options you may want to set here as well.

Save Auto Recover Info performs an auto save every x minutes in a temporary file. Should your system crash, you will at least have a copy at the saved point...

Some useful global settings

There are a handful of user settings that, by default, are turned off but are so useful, it makes us wonder why they aren't just permanently turned on.

Background

There are certain design options that need to be turned on in order to get the best from the developer's workbench. These turn on extended features that allow custom formatting of cells, extended styling options such as rounded corners on objects, and debugging problems after deploying your document to a server. When a QVW fails on a server, the log file can be quite unhelpful, but one simple setting before deployment will help you find problems quickly.

How to do it

Select User Preferences from the Settings menu and then click on the Design tab. There are three options here that should be set in order to use the workbench more effectively.

Default Styling Mode

Firstly, look for Default Styling Mode on the right-hand side, and change it from Simplified to Advanced. The effect of this will be to turn on various...

Some best practices for developers

It's preferable to always do things in a consistent manner, both personally and as part of a team. There are many ways to set up the QlikView environment, and if each developer chooses his own settings, this can lead to all kinds of issues and inconsistencies when you start to assemble a system.

Background

You might consider using some of the following ideas as part of your site standards. In any event, they're all good habits to get into. As they are all self-explanatory, we will present them as bullet points.

How to do it

• User Preferences: Always set up User Preferences the same on each machine you use.

• User Preferences: Always set up User Preferences after a new installation of QlikView or when you have a new PC.

• User Preferences: Add User Preferences to your site standards so that everyone works in the same way, especially if sharing PCs or a server.

• User Preferences: Review settings with your whole team to ensure that everyone agrees with the choices made...

Hidden features – Easter eggs

As with many other products, QlikView has a hidden set of features, which are often referred to as Easter eggs.

Background

The Easter eggs in QlikView open up a number of settings that are not available elsewhere; although, you may recognize some that can also be set through the developer interface. There are over 400 settings available, and it is not advisable to change some of them. However, the three that we describe in detail here you may find useful.

How to do it

The Easter eggs are hidden away in the Help menu. Click on About QlikView, and a pop-up window will be displayed, showing you the version and license details. To the lower-left is the Qlik logo:

If you let the mouse hover over the logo and then right-click on it, the Easter egg window appears:

Here, you can make changes to many settings that are not available elsewhere.

The following screenshot shows the AllowMacrosFunctionsInExpressions attribute:

When you create a function with VBScript or JScript in...

A few do's and don'ts

There are some things you should always do, and some you just shouldn't! You will find many little things in QlikView that you need to lock away in your memory, and they'll all add to your overall skill level.

Background

Some do's and don'ts may be thought of as best practice or useful site standards, but here are a few that work better on a personal level.

How to do it

Do:

• Use F1: QlikView's syntax is different from other languages. Use the F1 key to bring up context-sensitive help, showing you the full syntax and parameter list. This helps you learn the syntax and helps ensure that you get the correct results from the start.

• Drop Table: Drop Table in the script is a good way of making things more efficient. Remember, though, that dropping one table with identical fields to another will drop both!

• Drop Fields: If you drop fields, use a list rather than individual statements; it is much more efficient.

• Use the fora: Sometimes, QlikView throws up something odd that does not...

Summary

In this chapter, we showed you numerous tips and tricks to make you more productive and ensure that you don't lose your work when things go wrong. Some of these ideas are best practices, while others are simply not documented at all. These are all the things you need to know to help take your skills to the next level.