Qlik Sense data input

Question

I was excited to hear in today's webinar introducing Alteryx Analytics 10.0 that Qlik file input were supported, and that Kory Cunningham confirmed that this were true for both Qlikview and Qlik Sense.

Alas, it is not true for Qlik Sense, which produces .qvd files, not .qvx files.  I attempted to input a .qvd file.  It is not defined by Alteryx as a data file, so I displayed "All files", and upon selecting it a dialog window stating that this "...is not a recognized type" popped up.  I specified to read it as a "QlikView data eXchange (*.qvx)" file.  It returned with an error saying "Corrupt file.  Error reading table header:  QVX file contains no fields."

:(

WayneWooldridge · Accepted Answer

It's true that Qlik Sense produces .qvd file and not .qvx files.  The same is true of Qlikview, however.   Alteryx produces .qvx files which can be read as input into both Qlikview and Qlik Sense.  The .qvd files cannot used as input files even if you specify to read it as an .qvd file.  The key is to create another file type from the .qvd that can be used as input to Alteryx.

Most QlikView developers will use the STORE statement frequently for writing QVD files during load scripts.  What many people don’t realise though is that there other values that can appear in the brackets at the end of the statement, to define the format of the output.

Generally text files are things that we interface with for loading data in from other systems – perhaps after an automated extract. Sometimes, however, there is cause to send data from the data sources that you are bringing into QlikView into other systems – after crunching them in your load script.

If you use STORE for writing QVDs, the STORE statement writes the contents of a single table in memory to a file during load script execution. The syntax is very similar for CSV output:

STORE MyTable INTO..\Output\MyOutputFile.txt

As with when the statement is used to store to a QVD file; it is possible to specify only certain fields are written to the output file:

STORE Name, Address1, Address2, PostCosde FROM MyTable INTO..\Output\MyOutputFile.txt

Unlike the QVD store, there are some optional parameters that can be given to further define the format of the file, such as:

STORE MyTable INTO..\Output\MyOutputFile.txt (delimeter is 	);

This will give you a tab delimited file, rather than a comma separated file (note that the extension of the file has no bearing on this, only the format specifier). There are other format specifiers that you can find in the help file or on Qlik Community.

rvalencourt · Accepted Answer

Hello Wayne,

>> Alteryx produces .qvx files which can be read as input into both Qlikview and Qlik Sense.

Yes, but Alteryx also reads .qvx files; why?

>> The key is to create another file type from the .qvd that can be used as input to Alteryx.

Okay, I didn't hear that in the web presentation.

>> What many people don’t realise though is that there other values that can appear in the brackets at the end of the statement, to define the format of the output.

I did realize that, but didn't think of it as the solution since Alteryx was advertising that it accepted Qlik file input.  Actually, since Qlik Sense doesn't produce .qvx files, Alteryx is not accepting Qlik input, unless one clarify that it has to be a csv-format text file.

Specifying Qlik "txt" file output worked for me when defining it for Alteryx input as a "Comma-Delimited Text Files (*.csv)" type of file.

Thanks!

René

@WayneWooldridge wrote:It's true that Qlik Sense produces .qvd file and not .qvx files.  The same is true of Qlikview, however.   Alteryx produces .qvx files which can be read as input into both Qlikview and Qlik Sense.  The .qvd files cannot used as input files even if you specify to read it as an .qvd file.  The key is to create another file type from the .qvd that can be used as input to Alteryx.

Most QlikView developers will use the STORE statement frequently for writing QVD files during load scripts.  What many people don’t realise though is that there other values that can appear in the brackets at the end of the statement, to define the format of the output.

Generally text files are things that we interface with for loading data in from other systems – perhaps after an automated extract. Sometimes, however, there is cause to send data from the data sources that you are bringing into QlikView into other systems – after crunching them in your load script.

If you use STORE for writing QVDs, the STORE statement writes the contents of a single table in memory to a file during load script execution. The syntax is very similar for CSV output:

STORE MyTable INTO..\Output\MyOutputFile.txt

As with when the statement is used to store to a QVD file; it is possible to specify only certain fields are written to the output file:

STORE Name, Address1, Address2, PostCosde FROM MyTable INTO..\Output\MyOutputFile.txt

Unlike the QVD store, there are some optional parameters that can be given to further define the format of the file, such as:

STORE MyTable INTO..\Output\MyOutputFile.txt (delimeter is 	);

This will give you a tab delimited file, rather than a comma separated file (note that the extension of the file has no bearing on this, only the format specifier). There are other format specifiers that you can find in the help file or on Qlik Community.

AdamR_AYX · Accepted Answer

Just to add a bit more detail here.  The reason Alteryx can't read QVD files is that QVD is a closed format. That is to say Qlik don't release a specification for it for other software vendors to use.  Qlik's open source format is QVX which is what Alteryx can read and write.

QlikSense and QlikView can both write QVX files, but for some reason Qlik don't make it very obvious how to do it.  The syntax is this

TestAccount:

SQL SELECT TOP 10 AccountNumber,AccountName

FROM Account ORDER BY AccountID DESC;

STORE TestAccount INTO [E:\QvDataSources\TestAccount.QVX] (qvx)

The magic part being that final (qvx).

Hope that helps.

rvalencourt · Accepted Answer

Hello Adam,

>> QlikSense and QlikView can both write QVX files, but for some reason Qlik don't make it very obvious how to do it.

They don't breathe a word of it, that I could find.  They mention only qvd and txt formats.  I'll probably switch from txt to qvx, then.

Thanks!

René