TABLEAU AND QLIKVIEW

COMPARISON
TABLE OF CONTAINS
• Gartner and Survey Analysis
• Features Analysis
• Data Analyst Analysis
GARTNER ANALYSIS

“Tableau's highly intuitive, visual-based data discovery,

dashboarding, and data mashup capabilities have
transformed business users' expectations about what
they can discover in data and share without extensive
skills or training with a BI platform.”
SURVEY ANALYSIS
Tableau Ranks Top in Business Benefits and Business Achievements in World's Largest Survey of Businessm
Intelligence Users : http://online.wsj.com/article/PR-CO-20131205-906991.html
2013 BARC BI SURVEY
Tableau Ranks Top in Data Visualization and Data Discovery – 2013 BARC BI Survey
FEATURE ANALYSIS
TABLEAU HAS “EASY STEPS” TO “GET CONNECTED”
- TABLEAU USES DRAG AND DROP

The data connection dialogue in Qlikview

QLIKVEW
“EASY” CREATION OF “DATE PARTS”
- TABLEAU DOES THIS BY SIMPLE DRAG AND DROP

Qlikview supports unlimited types of date parts. They are limited by how much programming you know…

QLIKVEW
“EASY” CREATION OF “HIERARCHIES”
- TABLEAU USES DRAG AND DROP

You can create your own hierarchies in Qlikview. Here’s an example of what that code looks like…

QLIKVEW
EASY MANAGEMENT OF MULTIPLE DATA SOURCES
- TABLEAU USES DRAG AND DROP

Adding a data source is easy – just go back into the editor for the connection script!

QLIKVEW
EASY DATA BLENDING
- TABLEAU USES DRAG AND DROP
QlikView does not appear to let you change your data blend on the fly, however…

QLIKVEW
QLIKVIEW FEATURES ANALYSIS
• Heavily Wizard-Based – creating charts, connecting to data, creating dashboards all require
navigating wizards.
• Additional Functionalities with Scripting/Formatting makes authoring more complex –
Tableau has a distinct advantage when it comes to ad-hoc reporting.
• Dashboards often require advanced implementation to build – a single object such as a bar
chart can take 10+ steps to create.
• Data Connection Limitations – no live connection option. No cube support. Also, Data
Warehouse users will have difficulty connecting to QlikView without investing in some kind of
middle-tier connection type. They position their “live connection,” but this is an additional cost,
and is “push” – eg an application pushing low volume transactional data to QlikView
• Large Data Sources – need to be deployed on the server.
• Dates – Require Scripting
• No Data Blending – QlikView offers the ability to integrate multiple data sources through
scripting but doesn’t have a data blending option like Tableau. This makes the integration quite
inflexible because it will be susceptible to data issues such as fan and chasm traps, or problems
around different granularity of data.
DATA ANALYST BLOG : PETER JUEL JENSEN
• http://vizdom.dk/2014/tableau-qlikview-comparison/
6 reasons why I favour Tableau over QlikView
DMITRY GUDKOV'S BLOG ABOUT BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE AND DATA VISUALIZATION

http://bi-review.blogspot.com/2012/11/impressions-from-tableau-in-comparison.html
APANDRE BLOG
apandre.wordpress.com
December 2013

• Main observations and notes from benchmarking of footprints with 10 millions of rows as
following:

• Tableau 8.1 requires less (almost twice less) disk space for its application file .TWBX then
Qlikview 11.2 (.QVW) for its application file (.QVW) or/and Spotfire 6 for its application file
(.DXP).

• Tableau 8.1 is much smarter when it uses RAM then Qlikview 11.2 and Spofire 6, because it
takes advantage of number of Marks. For example for 10000 Visible Datapoints Tableau uses
13 times less RAM than Qlikview and Spotfire and for 100000 Visible Datapoints Tableau uses
8 times less RAM than Qlikview and Spotfire!

• THe Usage of more than say 5000 Visible Datapoints (even say more than a few hundreds
Marks) in particular Chart or Dashboard often the sign of bad design or poor understanding of
the task at hand; the human eye (of end user) cannot comprehend too many Marks anyway, so
what Tableau does (in terms of reducing the footprint in Memory when less Marks are used) is
a good design.

• For Tableau in results above I reported the total RAM used by 2 Tableau processes in memory
TABLEAU.EXE itself and supplemental process TDSERVER64.EXE (this 2nd 64-bit process
almost always uses about 21MB of RAM). Note: Russell Christopher also suggested to monitor
TABPROTOSRV.EXE but I cannot find its traces and its usage of RAM during benchmarks.

• Qlikview 11.2 and Spotfire 6 have similar footprints in Memory and on Disk.
OTHER SOURCES
• Qlikview.Next has a gift for Tableau and Datawatch
(http://apandre.wordpress.com/2013/10/24/qlik-next-has-
gift/)
• https://apandre.wordpress.com/category/comparison/
• http://www.wallpaperingfog.co.uk/2011/10/dashboard-
software-why-we-chose-what-we.html
• http://tableau7.wordpress.com/2013/12/07/dv-footprints-
for-10m-rows/
• http://www.computerweekly.com/news/2240112678/Irish-
Life-chooses-Tableau-over-QlikView-Oracle
SUMMARY
• Tableau was designed to allow business users to answer their own questions.
• Qlikview requires knowledge of scripting, formulas, and wizards before creating any views.
• For the same type of analysis, Qlikview requires a much higher learning curve.
• Built in Best Practices - Chart Creation is easier in Tableau because a user doesn’t have to know
beforehand what type of chart they’re going to create. Tableau will recommend something.
• Ramp up Time – QlikView recommends a week spent training using their software, or to invest in
professional services. Most Tableau users can be trained in a matter of hours.
• Self-Service – Although QlikView is easier to use than most traditional B.I. products, the ad hoc
and authoring experience doesn’t allow a business user to easily create views and analyze data.
They are more comparable to big B.I. products than to Tableau in this instance.
• Data Connections – Nearly all data connections in QlikView require user-created scripts.
Tableau’s data blending is unrivaled in its ability to combine multiple data types. QlikView does
have the powerful ability join fields from disparate data sources, but this too requires scripting.
• What do we want for Ad-Hoc Analysis? Can connect to data instantly with no scripting or SQL
knowledge ? Do you want your business users to code in SQL?