It is possible to connect QlikView Desktop to a source control system; the ‘QvMsscciProvider.exe’ and ‘QvSvnProvider.exe’ are the providers used for this, giving you source control function to both Microsoft Team Foundation Server and Subversion.
Once connected to a source control system, QlikView developers can add projects to source control. During the Add process the:
- QlikView document is saved
- Project folder is created
- Project files are exported into the project folder
- Project files are added to source control
- Project settings file is created
The project settings file is stored in the local project folder and contains the settings necessary to access the source control information for the project. The project settings file is not included in the files managed by the source control system. The existence of the project settings file tells QlikView that a given document is managed by a source control system. In addition, QlikView has to be able to find and load the needed Provider DLL, in order to treat the document as attached to source control. This check is performed every time a document is opened in QlikView and a settings file appears in the project folder with information about the Source Control Provider, i.e. SourceControlSettings.ini.
If the document is attached to source control, the status bar will contain an indication of the document’s status.
QlikView integration with source control only affects document layout. No actual data loaded into QlikView is placed into nor fetched from, source control. The operation, Get Project from Source Control will load a document that contains everything except data. A Reload must be executed to populate the document with data.
After a QlikView document is connected to source control, saving the document will automatically check out the files that have changes. QlikView does not provide any other way of checking out the project files. If Source Control system is not available while performing document Save, QlikView will try to work "offline", i.e. remove read only flags from the modified files and save the latest version. On the next document save, when Source Control system is available, QlikView will perform check out for all locally modified files.
On document save, project files are not checked in. To check in document updates to source control, the Check In Pending Changes menu item must be used. A single QlikView check in operation can generate several changesets when using Microsoft TFS and only one when using Subversion. As a result, rollback between randomly selected changesets in Microsoft TFS does not guarantee that the document will be in a stable state.
