Big data is the gold mine for industries of all classifications. Every business aspires to the most reliable data analysis and visualization medium for their business requirements. In this article, we intend to provide you with knowledge on the best BI tool for visualizing Big data. Apart from that, we will discuss the major difference between Tableau, Power Bi, and Qlik Sense.
Before moving to the differences between these tools, let’s have a quick look at their functions and features.
Tableau:
Tableau is a potent and rapid-growing data visualization tool utilized in the industry of Business Intelligence. It accommodates businesses to simplify the raw data in a quite understandable and secured format. Tableau helps in generating the data in a proper way that can be easily understood and used by professionals of all levels in a business. Furthermore, it allows non-technical users to design business-specific customized dashboards. Using Tableau, analyzing data can be done at a faster pace and generate visualizations in various forms of worksheets and dashboards. The demand for candidates with Tableau certification is increasing every single day.
Features of Tableau
The following are the major Tableau features, which helps business to visualize the data in the proper form.
- Provides exceptional Data Blending
- Real-time analysis
- Collaboration of data
- Good drag and drop
- Perfect data sharing using Tableau Public
- Effectively implements interactive web-based data visualizations
- Strong and reliable tools with strong performance
- Capable of handling large amounts of data
- Live and In-memory Data
- Licensing Views
- Advanced Visualizations
- Revision History
- Mobile-friendly and supports all online versions
Advantages of Tableau
Here are the primary advantages of Tableau, which are responsible for its ever-lasting demand.
- Fantastic Visualizations: You may now deal with a large amount of unorganized data and build a variety of representations. Well, owing to Tableau’s built-in features, which enable you to create visuals that stand out from the crowd.
- User-friendly Approach: Tableau’s greatest strength is that it is designed from the ground up for users with no technical knowledge or coding background. As a result, anyone with no prior experience can use this tool to complete any task.
- In-depth Insights: Tableau can assist businesses in analyzing data in the future without any set aims in mind. You can experiment with visualizations and look at the same data from several perspectives.
- Working with Disparate Data Sources: In today’s data-driven environment, where data can originate from any point and any heterogeneous source, Tableau has a compelling reason to be incorporated by numerous businesses.
- Adding Datasets: Tableau allows you to simply add new datasets to Tableau, whether it’s a database or an Excel workbook. These datasets are seamlessly blended with Tableau using common fields.
- Switching Between Visualizations: You may also switch between different visualizations to have a better understanding of the data, as well as drill down and explore it at a more detailed level.
Power BI
Microsoft Power BI is one of the leading data visualization and analytics tool that empowers users to connect to a broad variety of data origins and generate dashboards and reports. Though it was formerly developed as an add-on to Microsoft Excel, it has developed to attain on its own as a challenging outcome that accomplishes the requirements of all businesses, from small businesses to large industries. Its specialities encompass seamless integration with Microsoft Office technologies, data querying, and powerful data preparation abilities. It provides better results when compared with the rest in some ways as it is cooperative most competent with Microsoft Azure and Microsoft cloud environment. Moreover, users can connect to other sources like Excel for importing data and creating personalized dashboards.
Features of Power BI
Following are the most powerful Power BI features, which help businesses to grow.
- Rich Graphical visualizations from complex BI data
- Range of Attractive Visualizations
- Get Data
- Ad-hoc Reporting
- Datasets Filtration
- Good Navigation Pane
- Flexible Tiles
- Customizable Dashboards
- Informative Reports
- Navigation Pane
- Datasets with customizable dashboards
Advantages of Power BI
Here are the major advantages that Power BI provides to businesses.
- Business intelligence (BI) is a tool that assists you in increasing the productivity of your company: Power BI is a powerful tool that maintains the complete company’s data at a time, regardless of department. Power BI collects data from one place and processes it to produce a decision-support tool using a collection system and deliver accurate results.
- The user-friendly tool supports dashboard and data analysis: Another key advantage of Power BI is its ease of use. It only takes a few clicks for a manager or analyst to get access to details. Each user can adjust the analysis of the findings to their demands and role-related characteristics.
- No specialized technical guide required: Power BI offers agile inquiry and evaluation without using any specialized technical guides. It supports an effective language interface using intuitively designed graphical tools.
- Balanced simplicity and performance: The in-memory evaluation technology and DAX scripting language are each superb examples of stability among simplicity and performance.
- Easy to access from anywhere: Power BI is accessible from anywhere. It’s a great choice for mobile teams or companies with multiple locations. An engineer on the go can use their phone to access data, an analyst can use their desktop computer to consult the dashboard, and a manager can use their tablet to view graphical representations during a management meeting.
- The finest support from Microsoft is a robust Power BI community: If you use Power BI, you are not alone; there is a vibrant community of users that are eager to assist. To begin with, any customer who has a question regarding this business intelligence program is not abandoned by Microsoft support. There is also a slew of tools on the Internet that can help you figure out what Power BI is all about.
- Extracting commercial enterprise intelligence swiftly and accurately: It facilitates remodelling your employer statistics into rich and enhanced visuals, consequently extracting commercial BI support for better choice making.
- Supports Advanced Data offerings: Microsoft Power BI support groups can assist combine the surroundings seamlessly with superior cloud offerings like Cognitive offerings, Cortana, or Bot framework. Thus, imparting outcomes for the verbal statistics question given the use of herbal language.
QlikView
QlikView is a data design and analytics tool from Qlik Technologies that accommodates businesses to produce data-driven determinations by making penetrations convenient to enterprise users. Developed for quick deployment and accurate configuration, it unites straightly and pulls data from almost any information source and later concedes users to interpret their data including build visualizations, which communicate its story efficiently. Its differentiators involve the Qlik Associative Engine that records every desirable association amongst data to administer faster insights and facilitate associative interpretation, a data governance dashboard, and wizards for signals, reporting, and more. Though the vendor supports users to transfer to its cloud-based QlikSense platform, it proceeds to produce updates and assistance for QlikView, as it endures a powerful opponent in the BI field.
Features of QlikView
The following are the essential QlikView features.
- In-memory storage technology
- Agile application development
- Mobility and scalability
- Business discovery and visual analysis
- Data collaboration and connectivity
- Hybrid Data-approach
- Mobile-ready, Roles, and Permissions
- Interact with dynamic apps, Dashboards
- Social data discovery
- Natural analytics and data discovery
- Associative model
- Enterprise platform capabilities
- Interactive guided analytics
- Comparative analysis
Advantages of QlikView
Some of the critical QlikView features are defined as follows.
- Dynamic Business Intelligence Ecosystem: QlikView provides a dynamic Business Intelligence ecosystem for users that provides dynamic visualization solutions.
- Interpretation and analysis of data: Its visual and dynamic dashboards and applications aids in data interpretation and analysis in a timely and effective manner.
- Data Exchange: Different teams can work together to make critical decisions based on data and interpretations. QlikView’s social analysis and real-time data sharing capabilities help to facilitate this collaboration.
- Self-Service Tool: QlikView is a self-service BI tool that allows a user to operate proficiently without depending on the IT department, which would stifle the company’s workforce. No professional knowledge is required for application scripting or dashboard adjustments, and any non-technical employee of an organization can operate with Qlikview without difficulty.
- Low Care and Maintenance: The software is incredibly simple to install and use. The software does not require much maintenance or technical supervision even in subsequent years.
- Data Protection: The tool’s data security provision is highly strict, and the authors promise that essential corporate data is safe. The consumer is provided complete assurance that there will be no security breach.
Key Differences Between Tableau, Power BI, and QlikView
These are the powerful and on-demand data visualization tools and are the best choices for organizations in the market; let us discuss some of the major differences:
- Tableau and Power BI are user-friendly whereas QlikView has high customizable designs.
- Tableau and QlikView work for analyzing statistics whereas Power Bi does not provide this capability.
- Power BI can easily connect with any data source without using ETL. The QlikView is faster than the other two tools and is accessible by multiple users at a time and there are limitations in the case of Tableau.
- The documents in QlikView are stored in the .qvw format and can be accessed using QlikView’s proprietary communication protocol. Furthermore, you can store these documents in Windows OS, and the Qlik Server is used to save the events, which are responsible for Client-Server. The Power BI supports three types of files excel(.xls), power BI desktop(.pbix), (.csv). Finally, the Tableau extract files have (.tde) file extensions.
- For external data sources, the QlikView Supports the OLEDB interfaces. Power BI loads the data from OLEDB and then publishes it in the BI Server.
- The QlikView shape isn’t properly controlled whereas the user can manipulate the Tableau shape based on the user guide.
- QlikView works as a standalone technique with the capability to publish the data. Power BI is available only on the SAAS model whereas Tableau has cloud and on-premises options.
- Power BI provides better data modelling facilities and there is a huge demand for Certified Power BI professionals in the market whereas QlikView generates better data insights rapidly and has less demand when compared with other tools in the market.
Comparative Table
All three are the most powerful and on-demand data visualization tools and are renowned brands in the market. However, there are a lot of comparisons among the three products, so in this comparative table, we will inspect those identities and variations.
| The basis of comparison | Tableau | Power BI | QlikView |
| Performance | User-friendly tool and so, non-technical users can use it effectively. | Lacks behind in visualizing the data | QlikView requires a developer to generate reports and dashboards. It is a good visualization tool. |
| User Interface | Effective User Interface | Dashboards are the critical feature of PowerBI when Users have an effective interface to publish. | Weak User Interface compared with Tableau and Power BI |
| Ease of Learning | User-friendly, requires Excel knowledge | No need for technical expertise | Easy to learn if having the background in Data Science |
| Supportive requirements | Works with front-end tools like R | Power BI Gateway and Desktop | Consists of both front-end QlikView developer and back-end QlikView publisher |
| Version | Tableau Reader is a free one whereas the Tableau Server requires a valid license | PowerBI’s desktop version is free whereas the Power BI Pro is pay per month. | QlikView Personal Edition is a free version and can work without a license key. |
| Cost-EffectivenessCost- Effectiveness | Expensive when compared with other tools | Less expensive. | The personal version is affordable whereas the Enterprise version is expensive |
| Online Analytical Programming | Can connect with OLAP considering the cube measures at the deepest possible level | Can connect with OLAP cubes through SQL servers for multidimensional analysis | Access to OLAP and provides encapsulated data views. |
| Speed | Depends on RAM and data sets | Smart Recovery | Better speed when compared with other tools |
| Advantage | On-demand and top-ranked tool among all the Business Intelligence visualization tools. | Affordable and has scalability for larger projects. | Provides a wide range of deep analytics and with good customer satisfaction |
Final Thoughts
Choosing the best-suited data visualization tool is one of the major factors to consider when handling sensitive business data. The drag and drop inclinations accompanying protected data associations make Tableau a top-rated tool in the market. QlikView intensities involve in-memory engine capacities of visualizing designs. Generating reports over Power BI can be administered across distinct teams and is accessible on any device. Overall, the Power BI emerges as the competitor’s tool amongst the three tools. It is a high-level Microsoft application and platform, which has exceptional support for the cloud platform. Finally, Tableau is the best-preferred choice in the contemporary market of business analysis.