Qlik Sense OCF Connector: Overview

Alation Cloud Service Applies to Alation Cloud Service instances of Alation

Customer Managed Applies to customer-managed instances of Alation

Core Connector Core connectors are included with all Alation platform tiers (subject to each tier’s connector limits) and are fully supported by Alation.

The OCF Connector for Qlik Sense was developed by Alation and is available out of the box.

To download the Qlik Sense OCF connector package, go to the Alation Connector Hub available from the Customer Portal. Go to Customer Portal > Connectors > Alation Connector Hub. Only Alation users with access to the Customer Portal can access the Alation Connector Hub. If you don’t have access to the Customer Portal, contact Alation Support.

This connector should be used to catalog Qlik Sense as a BI source in Alation. It extracts Qlik Sense objects such as Streams, Applications and Sheets. Users will be able to search and find Qlik Sense objects, curate Qlik Sense object pages, and explore measures and dimensions from the Alation user interface.

Team

The following administrators are required to install this connector:

• Alation Server Admin:

  • Installs the connector

  • Creates a Qlik Sense BI source

  • Provisions Alation API tokens

• Qlik Sense administrator with the RootAdmin privilege:

  • Creates and exports the certificates.

Scope

The table below shows what features are covered by the connector.

Feature	Scope	Availability
Qlik Sense	Catalog a Qlik Sense instance as a BI source	Yes
Streams	Extract streams	Yes
Filter streams	Ability to include or exclude specific streams	Yes
Container	Ability to catalog Container objects	Yes
KPI	Ability to catalog KPI object	Yes
Dates	Ability to catalog Date object	Yes
Applications	Catalog applications in a stream	Yes
Filter applications	Ability to include or exclude specific applications.	Yes
Filter pane objects	Ability to include or exclude cataloging of Filter pane objects. Filter pane labels are not cataloged.	Yes
Sheets	Catalog sheets in an application	Yes
Filter sheets	Ability to include or exclude certain sheets	No
Sheet objects, dimensions, measures, and expressions	Catalog dimensions, measures and measures expressions of a sheet object	Yes
Auto-generated sheet object titles	Ability to capture auto generated sheet object titles in Qlik Sense	No
Data sources	Ability to catalog data sources	Yes
Master items	Ability to catalog master items	Yes*
Tables	Ability to catalog tables	Yes*
Table Columns	Ability to catalog table columns	Yes*
Image previews	Ability to preview thumbnail images of sheet objects	No
Source comments	Ability to extract source comments for sheets and apps	Yes
Lineage	Ability to generate lineage for the BI source	Yes
Cross-System lineage	Ability to generate lineage between the BI source and a data source	No

* Supported from Qlik Sense OCF Connector version 1.4.0 and later.

Limitations

• As Qlik Sense API currently does not return the host and port information of upstream data sources, Alation is unable to support cross-system lineage.

• The connector parses the field names and expressions for the associated Sheet objects from the JSON response. The connector parses most of the information; however, some information might be lost in some cases.

Qlik Sense Object Hierarchy

The following diagram shows the hierarchy of Qlik Sense objects and how they are cataloged in Alation:

Qlik Sense API Methods

The table below lists the Qlik Sense API methods used by this connector to extract metadata from the Qlik Sense server:

Type	API Methods	Description
Stream	GetDocList	Gets the list of applications which includes streams from Qlik.
Application	GetDocList	Gets the list of applications which includes streams from Qlik.
Sheets	OpenDoc CreateSessionObject GetLayout	Every time when the application is opened, a session is created and the information is returned.
Sheets Objects	GetObject GetFullPropertyTree	GetObject gets basic sheet information. GetFullPropertyTree produces a JSON object with all information.
Sheet object dimensions, measures, expressions	GetFullPropertyTree	Gets each sheet object, its dimensions, measures, and expressions
DataSources	GetConnections GetLineage	GetConnections returns all connections used by the application. GetLineage can be used to tie an application to a set of data sources.
Master Items (Measures and Dimensions)	OpenDoc CreateSessionObject {DimensionList}	Gets a list of master columns from a specific app. Generates a mapping for master dimensions to a sheet using the definition of the sheet object’s column.
Tables, Table Columns	GetTablesAndKeys	Gets a list of tables and table columns from a specific app.

Refer to App API for more information.

Qlik Sense Cloud APIs

The table below lists the Qlik Sense Cloud API endpoints used by this connector to extract lineage:

Note

The following APIs are used only when Qlik Cloud Integration is enabled.

Type	Category	API Endpoint	Description
Token (OAuth M2M)	Authentication	POST https://<tenant>.qlikcloud.com/oauth/token	Qlik Sense cloud authentication to get a token. Request body includes client_id, client_secret, grant_type=client_credentials, and scope.
Items API	Cataloging	GET https://<tenant>.qlikcloud.com/api/v1/items?spaceId=<SPACE_ID>	This endpoint is used to get the QRIs for each app within the specified space.
Lineage Graph API	Cataloging and Lineage Mappings	GET https://<tenant>.qlikcloud.com/api/v1/lineage-graphs/nodes/<QRI>?down=n	Catalog QVDs and other datasets of the application. It provides the lineage mappings between those objects.