ANLY482 AY2017-18 T2 Group15 Comparison of Platforms
Jump to navigation
Jump to search
COMPARISON OF PLATFORMS
- As the team constructed the client’s dashboard on the two suggested platforms, they documented a comparative evaluation, based on the criteria listed at the start, between the platforms’ strengths and drawbacks, to present an objective final recommendation. The team's personal findings, based on their use of the respective tools are tabulated as shown:
| Criteria | Qlik Sense | Tableau |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Visualizations | Both Qlik Sense and Tableau offers various useful chart types and features to visualize the data. Charts are of good aesthetic quality. | |
| 2. Interactions | Able to create data associations for cross chart filter selections. However, unable to set specific filter for a particular chart without affecting other charts of similar data source. Current proposed solution by Qlik Community, Alternate States extension, is not functioning fully. A workaround of creating data islands and creating charts based on separate data is possible but tedious. | Able to set specific filters for charts and easily modifiable. Allows for cross chart filter selections. |
| 3. Multi-chart Displays | Both tools can support multi-chart display functions. | |
| 4. Statistical Calculations | Allows for statistical calculations, but requires scripting knowledge to implement. | Allows for statistical calculations and easy to implement. |
| 5. Speed of Response | Both tools are highly dynamic and have high speed of response. | |
| 6. Data Access and Integration | While both support ETL functions, Qlik Sense is has a slight edge on its data loading functions. | |
| 7. Output and Content Management | Content can be disseminated in various forms, through email distribution, shared repositories and various selections of imaging exports. | |
| 8. Platform Options | Both tools support web-based and mobile forms of display, allowing for convenient dissemination of reports throughout the organisation with an enterprise account. | |
| 9. Ease of Learning and Use | Qlik Sense, while offering drag-and-drop to a certain extent, still requires extensive scripting knowledge to develop advanced charts. | Tableau offers a higher degree of usability and ease of learning with its drag-and-drop functions. |
| 10. Programmability | Both programs are fully-programmable and offers the possibility of installing community add-ons for enhancement. | |
| 11. Advanced Features | Both tools are limited in their advanced features, such as the ability of integrated data mining and clustering capabilities where other software such as JMP and SAS are better at. | |
CONCLUSION
- Based on the analysis above, the team concluded that the objective recommendation for dashboard design and reporting would be to use Tableau. Apart from dashboard functions, Tableau holds additional advantages in handling data, such as the availability of calculated fields which link multiple fields of existing data to create new ones. Besides being a definite upgrade to the current Excel dashboard, it is also comparatively more user-friendly in terms of design and interface than Qlik Sense. While Qlik excels in the Extraction, Transformation and Loading (ETL) functionality, this is currently not a priority for our client. Furthermore, Tableau also has reasonable ETL capabilities, and hold other benefits which outweigh this function. Lastly, the criteria that sets Tableau to be objectively recommended over Qlik Sense is with regards to its simple interface and usability, which is one of the three main criteria sought for in a Visual BI Tool – Ease of Use.
