Business Intelligence Bout: MicroStrategy 9.3 vs. QlikView 11

As a special request I have taken a look into the latest versions of both MicroStrategy (9.3) and QlikView (11) for a comparison between the two platforms. I have already looked at and written about both of these technologies in BI Battle Royale but will be making a slightly more detailed study for this article.

I will be exploring and making my judgements based on the following key points:

• Data Source connectivity – The different kinds of data sources you can use and how simple it is to make a connection
• Report Capabilities – What kind of functionality comes with report development and how flexible this tool is
• Dashboards – What kind of functionality comes with dashboard development and how flexible this tool is
• Mobile Capabilities – How the technology can be used on a mobile medium
• Aesthetics – The amount of freedom a developer has with pixel perfect design and fine-tuning

Whilst I’ll be trying to keep this comparison as unbiased as possible I must re-iterate the fact that I am a certified developer for MicroStrategy v9 and have not had the same kind of training for QlikView. However as intuitiveness is not a factor in this study I will be allowing myself as much time as I deem sufficient to try and explore and discover special features which help me achieve the desired effects for a dashboard or report. Therefore I invite any QlikView or MicroStrategy experts out there to make any comments to support or refute any of the points I make as there will certainly be different opinions out there.

Here are the following specs of each technology I am using to clarify which features and capabilities are available to me (You’ll have to go research the feature list yourself) –

• MicroStrategy Reporting Suite version 9.3
• QlikView Personal Edition version 11

So here goes…

Data Source Connectivity

I feel it is quite important for a BI tool to have the capability of connecting to a number of different types of data sources as it allows them to be deployed on various different environments without much difficulty. It is quite common for companies to have a data system already in place before exploring BI solutions; therefore it makes more sense for the BI platform to adapt to the system already in place rather than the other way around. It can also make processes easier and quicker if the company decides to migrate their data onto a new system and platform.

When I first used QlikView I was only able to connect to an excel data sheet; however as I looked a bit further and read some of the documentation I discovered that quite a variety of different connectors were available to choose from. Using the ODBC option I could connect to data sources which I had created with Window’s data source manager; this opened up many possibilities provided I had the correct drivers installed on my system. I was also able to connect to the standard Microsoft OLE DB sources. Connecting to the data sources is achieved through some SQL script which is generated via the selected functions in the script creator; this capability leads me to believe that a developer is able to create highly complex queries based on their needs for the data.

MicroStrategy comes with a very large list of drivers out of the box which permit connections to the likes of DB2, Oracle, PostgreSQL, Microsoft, Sybase, Hadoop and so forth. This makes connecting to the most common data platforms a very simple task as a user can just follow the wizard which takes them through the process step by step. Additionally, MicroStrategy includes the standard ODBC and OLE DB options which are found in QlikView. Similar to what I believe is possible in QlikView, MicroStrategy provides developers with the ability to write a freeform SQL report; giving them the ability to generate highly customised scripts which query the database according to their exact needs. Finally, it is also possible to use XQuery within MicroStrategy to connect to a data source over a web service, providing a live data feed such as stock indexes from Yahoo.

Report Documents

MicroStrategy’s document creator allows a developer to create highly polished report documents. Such documents can draw on numerous reports as data sources, allowing them to generate and render data in intelligent ways. The document development tool also segments the document into various sections which will handle the data differently; this is perfect for getting data to display in ways such as headers, actual values, or sub-totals.

The document editor allows the user to include graphs, images, dynamic sections which can be formatted to the user’s likings. The grid-like layout of the workspace also allows pixel perfect placement of objects within the document, making the end result highly polished and professional looking. Just placing a couple of objects onto the workspace such as in the above image can lead to a document such as the following:

QlikView Personal Edition doesn’t really offer a report document tool. When creating my dashboard there was an option to create a document report but it seemed extremely limited to a few objects which were text, images, and the current filter selections. I spent some time trying to determine if there was a way to get more onto the report but this didn’t seem possible. Due to this limitation, I found the reporting tool to be much less developed than its MicroStrategy counterpart.

With the editor it is possible to achieve pixel perfect placement of objects such as the text boxes and images. The workspace also has a function which shows gridlines to aid with the design. I believe this reporting feature is meant for printouts as the only way to see the state of the document is to see it in print preview (or by actually printing it). The report also dynamically picks up the current filter values as they are changed in the dashboard; this feature would’ve been great if the report could include actual data values (maybe it does but I couldn’t figure out how…).

I am aware however that other QlikView products have a report document development tool which is much more complete and comes with the kinds of features I expected.

Dashboards

Since I had already taken a look into building QlikView dashboards previously it didn’t take me long to get a decently formatted dashboard on-screen containing the different graphs and charts I wanted to display. By dedicating some extra time and effort into certain aspects I was able to achieve various effects with my data which helped display information in a cleaner, more concise, and clearer way.

There seemed to be some limitations however with certain features – Such as the ability to create panel stacks. Different tabs were achievable by adding new sheets but multi-layered panels within a single sheet didn’t seem possible. Whilst this didn’t have an effect on the dashboard for this exercise I can imagine scenarios where a developer would like certain portions of their dashboard to be inter-changeable without the need of switching to an alternative sheet/tab. It also helps to save space on a dashboard where similar graphs need to be displayed together to convey a complete story.

There is also not as much variety (compared to MicroStrategy) when it comes to the types of graphs available for visualising the data. QlikView has the standard graphs which are commonly used such as bar, line, and pie charts. But some of the more advanced visualisations such as word spheres, histograms, and 3D visualisations aren’t on the list of choices. This isn’t such a big issue as in most cases the standard graphs types are all that is needed for a dashboard. However for more advanced data discovery exercises the use of complex visualisations is sometimes required (Also it can’t hurt to have the options available to users).

Additionally, I was unable to find a way to move the legends of the graphs; by default it appears to the right of the graph and you can select different vertical alignments, styling, and spacing. I could even choose to hide the legend if I thought it was appropriate. However I was unable to make the legend appear horizontally beneath my graph where I felt it would’ve fitted nicer and given more space for the actual visualisation.

Despite the drawbacks I came across I found that I was able to make a dashboard which looked quite clean and professional.

One of the cool things I thought QlikView had was the ability to filter through the visualisations with the mouse by clicking and dragging a selection box. This made zoning in on various sections of data very easy and intuitive. The selection would also affect other graphs (even on other panels) so the current data view would be consistent across the entire dashboard.

It was also possible to add bookmarks to the dashboard which basically saved the current filter selections so you could reload them quickly at later times. This made it extremely convenient to switch between different views based on what you wished to see. It also made demonstrating interesting views of data to others easy as you could simply load pre-saved bookmarks instead of going through the dashboard (which can be cumbersome in extended demos).

The MicroStrategy dashboard also didn’t take me very long to create since I already knew the general layout and what kinds of visualisations I wanted. In terms of functionality and features I feel that MicroStrategy offers far more (too many to be completely explored for this article), but many of those features are only required on the most complex of dashboards. However, having the option is always nice as it generally gives the developer much more to work with and can inspire more creativity in how they present the dashboard.

Compared to QlikView the filtering within a dashboard is not as smooth (in my opinion) as you must use different kinds of selectors to define which attributes and metrics you want to display. Whilst you can still get to the cuts of data you want to view, the whole process is not as natural as simply clicking and dragging with the mouse pointer in one movement.

MicroStrategy also lacks an equivalent feature to bookmarks meaning you cannot pre-select any of your views and recall them with ease later for demo/browsing purposes. A user will always be required to navigate manually through the visualisations and filters to demonstrate any interesting artifacts which they have uncovered.

As you can see from the screenshots above, I was able to create a dashboard which looked very similar to the one I created in QlikView.

MicroStrategy has a number of different viewing modes which a developer can select from. This allows MicroStrategy to cater for users who wish to have extremely quick performing dashboards at the cost of more advanced (therefore requiring more complex processing) features; or dashboards with a large range of flash enabled widgets which make the entire solution very interactive and animated but will require more powerful processing systems. The dashboards can also be switched between the different view modes on the fly provided that the options have been enabled at the development level.

MicroStrategy contains a scheduling component which can send dashboards/documents out through various mediums such as e-mail based on certain events or over set time-frames (Friday COB every week for example). The e-mail can contain the latest views of the data which will be automatically distributed to any subscribers; ensuring the all parties are up to date with what is happening in the company.

The final feature which I think should be mentioned is MicroStrategy’s ability to drill from one document to another (I’m not sure if this can be done in QlikView). When looking at a dashboard a user may wish to drill down into more detail; this is quite a normal feature in all BI platforms. However with MicroStrategy it is possible to send a user, on click, to a different document or report which can be pre-filtered based on the parameters sent from the original dashboard (e.g. the age band a user has just clicked on). This makes analysing key performance indicators very easy as the user can seamlessly go from dashboard to report document and back in the space of a few clicks.

Mobile

For both technologies there are mobile capabilities which help a user access their business intelligence whilst on the move. QlikView mobile seems to be a separate component which doesn’t come with the personal edition I was trialling; however there are numerous demos online which I looked at to give me a general understanding on what is on offer.

I felt it was important to include this section despite the lack of hands-on investigation since Mobile BI/Mobile tec hnology is a rapidly growing space in the industry. Since I can’t perform an in-depth study I’ll just be giving a general overview of both and letting you guys decide which has a better offering.

MicroStrategy seems to have a very strong focus on the mobile space as there are numerous development options which are specifically for the iPad (Android is also available but iOS is the main focus). In general, the mobile dashboards have the traditional BI offerings where a viewer can explore and drill through the data as they would a web dashboard. However, with the capability of transactional services, a developer can go beyond traditional BI and begin developing a mobile business application which takes the process one step further. Business intelligence can be displayed within the application and a user can decide to take action, if any, based on the data being displayed – For example a manager can use a scheduling application to approve or disprove holiday requests (which fires off a transaction to the database) after bringing up a view of current staff availability over the next quarter. With this kind of capability I believe MicroStrategy has begun to expand into a space which is no longer traditional BI but can still be considered to have BI at its core.

QlikView on the other hand seems to follow the traditional BI route more strictly. From the demos I viewed it seemed that the QlikView mobile dashboards focused mainly on helping with decision making where a user could consume data on the move. Overall data trends, key performance indicators, and the general status of the company could be viewed and discussed away from the desktop such as in meetings, in coffee shops, and even from home. The mobile dashboard seemed to perform in a similar way to the web dashboard which is interesting because it means it comes with the positives such as bookmarks and the selection window for filtering. In addition to this I noticed that certain features were made available in mobile to simulate right-click functionality. I believe that a QlikView dashboard aims to aid users with decision making and providing traditional intelligence over a company’s data; this seems to be more in line with most other BI platforms out in the market and is unlike MicroStrategy where they are moving into the business applications space.

Aesthetics

For both QlikView and MicroStrategy I felt I could design and create some very polished dashboards. With both technologies I aimed to create dashboards which looked as similar as possible and was able to achieve this with the formatting properties available in each. As a result I feel that both technologies are extremely flexible in this area and can be made to accommodate any sort of branding and styling requirements.

Above is a screenshot of the QlikView panel displaying generosity of the different age bands.

Above is the corresponding generosity panel in MicroStrategy.

There are some minor differences in the flexibility which gives MicroStrategy a slight edge over QlikView. For example, I mentioned earlier how QlikView’s legend seemed to be confined to the right portion of a visualisation. This isn’t the case in MicroStrategy. I was able to remove the legend in one of the MicroStrategy graphs and have the legend display at the bottom of the other whilst still being confident that everything made sense to a viewer; this ultimately maximised the available space for data visualisation which is the most important aspect of the dashboard. With QlikView I also could have removed one of the legends, but this didn’t look as good with the remaining legend not having the capability to be moved below the graphs.

It is also possible to put borders around the MicroStrategy graphs (visible in the screenshots) which gave the whole dashboard a good finishing touch, taking its look and feel an extra little step.

Conclusion

In conclusion I believe both QlikView and MicroStrategy have some great offerings in terms of business intelligence. Both platforms will require trained developers for the maximum potentials to be unleashed. Both are also very flexible in terms of aesthetic design, allowing professionals to create a highly customised solution with complete branding and styling according to the user’s wishes. I think the usage of a QlikView dashboard is more natural to a user in certain aspects, especially with the way they can filter a dashboard with a selection window and how they can bookmark various views. MicroStrategy on the other hand offers a larger array of functionality and is beginning to pioneer a new front for mobile business applications which can lead to greater value beyond traditional BI for companies.

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