Qlik Sense

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Feature List

Dashboards

Charts

Datamodels

Lineage

Column Lineage

Owners

Ingestion Deployment

To run the Ingestion via the UI you'll need to use the OpenMetadata Ingestion Container, which comes shipped with custom Airflow plugins to handle the workflow deployment. If you want to install it manually in an already existing Airflow host, you can follow this guide.

If you don't want to use the OpenMetadata Ingestion container to configure the workflows via the UI, then you can check the following docs to run the Ingestion Framework in any orchestrator externally.

Requirements

OpenMetadata 1.1.1 or later

To deploy OpenMetadata, check the Deployment guides.

Metadata Ingestion

1. Visit the Services Page

The first step is to ingest the metadata from your sources. To do that, you first need to create a Service connection first.

This Service will be the bridge between OpenMetadata and your source system.

Once a Service is created, it can be used to configure your ingestion workflows.

Select your Service Type and Add a New Service

2. Create a New Service

Click on Add New Service to start the Service creation.

Add a new Service from the Services page

3. Select the Service Type

Select QlikSense as the Service type and click Next.

Select your Service from the list

4. Name and Describe your Service

Provide a name and description for your Service.

Service Name

OpenMetadata uniquely identifies Services by their Service Name. Provide a name that distinguishes your deployment from other Services, including the other QlikSense Services that you might be ingesting metadata from.

Note that when the name is set, it cannot be changed.

Provide a Name and description for your Service

5. Configure the Service Connection

In this step, we will configure the connection settings required for QlikSense.

Please follow the instructions below to properly configure the Service to read from your sources. You will also find helper documentation on the right-hand side panel in the UI.

Configure the Service connection by filling the form

Connection Details

Qlik Sense Base URL: This field refers to the base url of your Qlik Sense Portal, will be used for generating the redirect links for dashboards and charts. Example: https://server.domain.com or https://server.domain.com/<proxy-path>
Qlik Engine JSON API Websocket URL: Enter the websocket url of Qlik Sense Engine JSON API. Refer to this document for more details about. Example: wss://server.domain.com:4747 or wss://server.domain.com[/virtual proxy].

Since we use the Qlik Sense Engine APIs, we need to authenticate to those APIs using certificates generated on Qlik Management Console.

Qlik Certificate By Values: In this approach we provide the content of the certificates to the relevant field.

Client Certificate Value: This field specifies the value of client.pem certificate required for authentication.
Client Key Certificate Value: This field specifies the value of client_key.pem certificate required for authentication.
Root Certificate Value: This field specifies the value of root.pem certificate required for authentication.
Staging Directory Path: This field specifies the path to temporary staging directory, where the certificates will be stored temporarily during the ingestion process, which will de deleted once the ingestion job is over.

when you are using this approach make sure you are passing the key in a correct format. If your certificate looks like this:

You will have to replace new lines with \n and the final private key that you need to pass should look like this:

Qlik Certificate By Path: In this approach we provide the path of the certificates to the certificate stored in the container or environment running the ingestion workflow.

Client Certificate Path: This field specifies the path of client.pem certificate required for authentication.
Client Key Certificate Value: This field specifies the path of client_key.pem certificate required for authentication.
Root Certificate Value: This field specifies the path of root.pem certificate required for authentication.

User Directory: This field specifies the user directory of the user.

User ID: This field specifies the user id of the user.

Validate Host Name: Enable/Disable this field to validate the host name against the provided certificates.

6. Test the Connection

Once the credentials have been added, click on Test Connection and Save the changes.

Test the connection and save the Service

7. Configure Metadata Ingestion

In this step we will configure the metadata ingestion pipeline, Please follow the instructions below

Configure Metadata Ingestion Page

Metadata Ingestion Options

Name: This field refers to the name of ingestion pipeline, you can customize the name or use the generated name.
Dashboard Filter Pattern (Optional): Use it to control whether to include dashboard as part of metadata ingestion.
- Include: Explicitly include dashboards by adding a list of comma-separated regular expressions to the 'Include' field. OpenMetadata will include all dashboards with names matching one or more of the supplied regular expressions. All other dashboards will be excluded.
- Exclude: Explicitly exclude dashboards by adding a list of comma-separated regular expressions to the 'Exclude' field. OpenMetadata will exclude all dashboards with names matching one or more of the supplied regular expressions. All other dashboards will be included.
Chart Pattern (Optional): Use it to control whether to include charts as part of metadata ingestion.
- Include: Explicitly include charts by adding a list of comma-separated regular expressions to the 'Include' field. OpenMetadata will include all charts with names matching one or more of the supplied regular expressions. All other charts will be excluded.
- Exclude: Explicitly exclude charts by adding a list of comma-separated regular expressions to the 'Exclude' field. OpenMetadata will exclude all charts with names matching one or more of the supplied regular expressions. All other charts will be included.
Data Model Pattern (Optional): Use it to control whether to include data modes as part of metadata ingestion.
- Include: Explicitly include data models by adding a list of comma-separated regular expressions to the 'Include' field. OpenMetadata will include all data models with names matching one or more of the supplied regular expressions. All other data models will be excluded.
- Exclude: Explicitly exclude data models by adding a list of comma-separated regular expressions to the 'Exclude' field. OpenMetadata will exclude all data models with names matching one or more of the supplied regular expressions. All other data models will be included.
Database Service Name (Optional): Enter the name of Database Service which is already ingested in OpenMetadata to create lineage between dashboards and database tables.
Enable Debug Log (toggle): Set the 'Enable Debug Log' toggle to set the default log level to debug.
Include Owners (toggle): Set the 'Include Owners' toggle to control whether to include owners to the ingested entity if the owner email matches with a user stored in the OM server as part of metadata ingestion. If the ingested entity already exists and has an owner, the owner will not be overwritten.
Include Tags (toggle): Set the 'Include Tags' toggle to control whether to include tags in metadata ingestion.
Include Data Models (toggle): Set the 'Include Data Models' toggle to control whether to include tags as part of metadata ingestion.
Mark Deleted Dashboards (toggle): Set the 'Mark Deleted Dashboards' toggle to flag dashboards as soft-deleted if they are not present anymore in the source system.
Include Draft Dashboard (toogle): Set the 'Include Draft Dashboard' toggle to include draft dashboards. By default it will include draft dashboards.

8. Schedule the Ingestion and Deploy

Scheduling can be set up at an hourly, daily, weekly, or manual cadence. The timezone is in UTC. Select a Start Date to schedule for ingestion. It is optional to add an End Date.

Review your configuration settings. If they match what you intended, click Deploy to create the service and schedule metadata ingestion.

If something doesn't look right, click the Back button to return to the appropriate step and change the settings as needed.

After configuring the workflow, you can click on Deploy to create the pipeline.

Schedule the Ingestion Pipeline and Deploy

9. View the Ingestion Pipeline

Once the workflow has been successfully deployed, you can view the Ingestion Pipeline running from the Service Page.

View the Ingestion Pipeline from the Service Page

Securing Qlik Sense Connection with SSL in OpenMetadata

To establish secure connections between OpenMetadata and Qlik Sense, there are two ways to communicate: defining the certificate file path or using the certificates value. Navigate to the Advanced Config section.

When using the local certificate file path, ensure that the certificates are accessible from the Airflow Server. You can specify the path for the client certificate, client key certificate, and root certificate.

Alternatively, when using the certificates value, you can provide the CA certificate used for SSL validation by specifying the CA Certificate. If both client and server require mutual authentication, you can upload all three: CA Certificate, SSL Certificate, and SSL Key.

Refer to the guide on how to generate authentication certificates so that OpenMetadata can communicate with Qlik Sense here.

SSL Configuration by local file path

SSL Configuration

Troubleshooting

Workflow Deployment Error

If there were any errors during the workflow deployment process, the Ingestion Pipeline Entity will still be created, but no workflow will be present in the Ingestion container.

You can then Edit the Ingestion Pipeline and Deploy it again.
From the Connection tab, you can also Edit the Service if needed.