Within Victa we have been working with Qlik. In addition, we have also been working with Microsoft Power BI for more than three years. In this total period of more than 12 years, we have helped 800 customers to optimize and implement a BI environment. We regularly encountered obstacles that disrupted the implementations. Almost all obstacles can be linked to data connectivity with Qlik and Microsoft Power BI. Examples of obstacles: no suitable API available, performance issues of source system, reloads that don't run because they take too long.

More Cloud solution 

When creating a report, the connection to the data source is the first and one of the most important steps. And in many cases this is precisely the most complex step. If you have an on-premise data source or database, making a link is fairly easy with, for example, an odbc link or gateway. Only in the current IT landscape are there more and more Cloud solutions that use APIs (application programming interface). Many of those APIs have not been specially developed for Business Intelligence, but for general data access/linking. Due to the fact that it is usually not a special BI link, making a good connection is unfortunately not a guarantee. This may have to do with the type of API (REST, SOAP, GraphQL, RSS or XML/RPC). Our advice is therefore to always find this out before the start of an implementation. If it turns out that a direct link with, for example, Power BI becomes a challenge, there are of course always solutions to be found.

Victa Data Collector

From Victa, for example, we can recommend our VDC (Victa Data Collector) to use for data sources where no connector or (suitable) API is available. In this way we unlock the data and write it in a random file type to a database. A tool such as Power BI can then link directly to this database. After developing a report, this also ensures a better performance of the reloads when you have a report running in the Power BI Service.