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Working with crosstables in the data load script

A crosstab is a common type of table featuring a matrix of values between two orthogonal lists of header data. It is usually not the optimal data format if you want to associate the data to other data tables.

This topic describes how you can unpivot a crosstab, that is, transpose parts of it into rows, using the crosstable prefix to a LOAD statement in the data load script.

Unpivoting a crosstab with one qualifying column

A crosstab is often preceded by a number of qualifying columns, which should be read in a straightforward way. In this case there is one qualifying column, Year, and a matrix of sales data per month.

Crosstab with one qualifying column
Year Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun
2008 45 65 78 12 78 22
2009 11 23 22 22 45 85
2010 65 56 22 79 12 56
2011 45 24 32 78 55 15
2012 45 56 35 78 68 82

If this table is simply loaded into Qlik Sense, the result will be one field for Year and one field for each of the months. This is generally not what you would like to have. You would probably prefer to have three fields generated:

  • The qualifying column, in this case Year, marked with green in the table above.
  • The attribute field, in this case represented by the month names Jan - Jun marked with yellow. This field can suitably be named Month.
  • The data matrix values, marked with blue. In this case they represent sales data, so this can suitably be named Sales.

This can be achieved by adding the crosstable prefix to the LOAD or SELECT statement, for example:

crosstable (Month, Sales) LOAD * from ex1.xlsx;

This creates the following table in Qlik Sense:

Table with crosstable prefix added to the LOAD or SELECT statement
Year Month Sales
2008 Jan 45
2008 Feb 65
2008 Mar 78
2008 Apr 12
2008 May 78
2008 Jun 22
2009 Jan 11
2009 Feb 23
... ... ...

Unpivoting a crosstab with two qualifying columns

In this case there are two qualifying columns to the left, followed by the matrix columns.

Crosstab with two qualifying columns
Salesman Year Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun
A 2008 45 65 78 12 78 22
A 2009 11 23 22 22 45 85
A 2010 65 56 22 79 12 56
A 2011 45 24 32 78 55 15
A 2012 45 56 35 78 68 82
B 2008 57 77 90 24 90 34
B 2009 23 35 34 34 57 97
B 2010 77 68 34 91 24 68
B 2011 57 36 44 90 67 27
B 2012 57 68 47 90 80 94

The number of qualifying columns can be stated as a third parameter to the crosstable prefix as follows:

crosstable (Month, Sales, 2) LOAD * from ex2.xlsx;

This creates the following result in Qlik Sense:

Table with qualifying columns stated as a third parameter to the crosstable prefix
Salesman Year Month Sales
A 2008 Jan 45
A 2008 Feb 65
A 2008 Mar 78
A 2008 Apr 12
A 2008 May 78
A 2008 Jun 22
A 2009 Jan 11
A 2009 Feb 23
... ... ... ...

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