Data Sources - QlikView 11 for Developers - page 55

A very important point you must consider when installing ODBC and OLE DB
drivers is the architecture. In most cases, you will find the driver installation
packages for both 32-bit and 64-bit operating systems. You need to take into account
not only which architecture your OS is running on, but also which edition (x64 or
x86) of QlikView you will be using. For example, if your OS is 32-bit, then the only
edition of QlikView you can install will be 32-bit (x86). However, if your OS is 64-
bit, you could either install the x86 or x64 edition of the QlikView program. It is
important, from the moment you first install QlikView, to know which edition is
more convenient for the environment you will be working on.
The QlikView version and edition
If you want to find out which QlikView edition you are
currently running, you can find out by going to the Help
menu and clicking on About QlikView... . There, you will
find information like the version (9, 10, 11, and so on), the
release, as well as the build number and the edition.
In some cases, the DBMS might not provide drivers for both architectures so you
may only find the 32-bit edition. In that case, QlikView makes it possible to use 32-bit
connection drivers even from the 64-bit edition.
Accessing custom data sources
OLE DB and ODBC are the most common types of connectivity you will find
in corporate environments. However, there are certain data sources that cannot
be accessed naturally via any of these standards. For these few (but increasing)
scenarios, QlikView provides the ability to integrate what is called Custom Data
Sources , and extract data from them and manipulate it as any other source.
We can access custom data sources just as we access any other common database:
with a connector or a driver. In this case, we can either build our own custom
provider, or buy it from a third-party. The former typically requires using C or C++
code to create the communication architecture between the custom data source and
QlikView. QlikTech provides a Software Development Kit (SDK) to facilitate the
construction of these programs, sometimes even including sample code.
An example of a custom data source would be Salesforce.com . The connectivity
for Salesforce.com is provided by QlikTech via a free, add-on, .dll -based adapter,
and allows rapid extraction of the data stored in this popular CRM system. This
.dll -based adapter is what we call a connector, which serves the same purpose as
that of an ODBC/OLE DB driver.