This month we made the decision to make QVExcel freely available. This wasn't an easy decision but reflects our commitment to our flagship product QVSource and our desire to ensure that we provide the best service possible to users of this tool.

You can read the official statement on the website and it is also reproduced below. As noted we are open to conversations with other companies about developing QVExcel further and also discussions regarding providing bespoke support and development to enterprise customers.

It's also possible that we will secure the resources ourselves in the future to re-release a commercially supported version on general release - however for the time being we felt this was the best choice and rather than removing the product altogether, should allow many users to make use of the tool.

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QVExcel is now completely free to download and use!

We made this decision in July 2012 after many years of developing and promoting the product. The primary reason for this is that we would now like to focus our attention on our flagship product QVSource. As a small company dividing our attention across both products means we cannot sustain our hard earned reputation for superior products and support to our customers.

We still strongly believe in the potential of QVExcel and feel that the current version should meet the needs of 90% of the intended user base. Please note that we will continue to support any current customers who have paid for support or alternatively offer a refund.

If you represent an enterprise who would like to use QVExcel but would not do so under a free arrangement please contact us - we would be happy to discuss the possibility of a paid bespoke support agreement tailored to your needs.

We are also open to talking to other companies with QlikView and software development expertise who would like to collaborate on taking the product forward.

Thanks,

Industrial CodeBox.

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Loading data into QlikView from public APIs has always been something of a challenge, often requiring complex macros, load scripts or external executables to do the work (I have even posted various macro based solutions on this blog before here, here and here).

I was never happy with the solutions I saw or that I came up with personally but the requirement for better API connectivity kept growing - we even started using more and more online systems for our own business (particularly for CRM online and accounting and we also make heavy use of Google Spreadsheets) so getting all this great data into QlikView became a personal pain point.

QVSource, our latest product, aims to address this and in doing so we hope will make QlikView the best connected BI tool. There is a great deal of information over on the website (specifically the documentation wiki) where you can also request a free download and start playing with the beta, so I don't need to repeat it here - but in simple terms the goal is to allow QlikView users to start downloading data from their favourite APIs in minutes and with minimum technical ability (usually you just need to punch in a username/password or API key and start selecting the tables you are interested in).

Connectors are already available for LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Google Analytics, Google Spreadsheets, OData, MongoDB, Sentiment Analysis, Twitter trust and other influence metrics and more.

For .NET developers we also working an an SDK which allows QlikView connectors to be built in hours rather than days (or weeks) - The SDK takes care of a number of common tasks such as authentication (including OAuth), caching, settings management, converting from xml/json to DataTables, password encryption, distribution/updating and more. The Twitter connector was actually built by a partner using the SDK.

QVSource is currently a functional beta so please give it a go and let us know what you think and what APIs you would like to see connectors for.