One of the basics of dimensional modeling is the ability to drill between models to answer questions. There are a few situations in QlikView that make this an important consideration, for example:
- We might have multiple data models, with some shared dimensions, that might be difficult technically, or even excluded by license, to associate within one QlikView document.
- Most analysis for most users can be performed on an aggregated, low-memory-footprint data model, but for some users on some occasions, they need to drill down to a lower level of detail.
- In some situations, the number of applications is not a consideration, and we create multiple applications within different business areas but want users to have some options to link between them.
QlikView handles this quite well with the document chaining function. As with any other system where you need to drill across, the ability to do so is entirely dependent on the use of conformed dimensions.
To enable document chaining with the ability to drill across, we need to add an action to a suitable object (button, text object, gauge chart, or line object) with an External action type of Open QlikView Document. We can see the settings for this in the following screenshot:
The Transfer State option will pass the current selections from this QlikView document to the document being opened. This is based on field name and the values. This is why it is important to use conformed dimensions because they ensure that both the field names and field values are the same between all the documents that are sharing those dimensions.