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...