QSDA study guide
QSDA · Work through your exam, one topic at a time.
The Qlik Sense Data Architect certification (often abbreviated QSDA) is a vendor credential for practitioners who design and maintain the data layer of Qlik Sense applications rather than the front-end visualisations. It suits BI developers, data engineers and consultants who routinely write load scripts, model tables and keys, and decide how data is stored, refreshed and secured before it reaches a sheet. The QSDA study guide has 6 sections and about 2,023 words.
01Data Modeling: Associations, Joins, Synthetic Keys, Circular References, Star and Snowflake Schemas
Qlik Sense does not enforce a schema; it infers associations from identically named fields. That freedom is exactly what the exam tests.
365 words, about 2 min02Data Loading and Transformation: Load Script, ETL Patterns, Incremental Loads, Resident and Preceding Loads
The script runs top-to-bottom, but within a single table the preceding load (the block written above the FROM ) is evaluated last: the bottom statement executes first, then each load above wraps that result. This is why a preceding load can rename or calculate fields produced by the statement below it.
323 words, about 2 min03Data Quality and Integrity: Cleansing, Null Handling, Granularity, Key Consistency
Nulls propagate: 1 + Null is Null. Aggregations ignore them ( Sum , Avg , Count(field) ), but Count( ) counts rows regardless.
312 words, about 2 min04Performance Optimization: Script Tuning, Data Volume Reduction, Calculation Efficiency, QVD Usage
Performance problems in Qlik are almost always volume or granularity problems. Drop fields you never use ( DROP FIELD ), keep fact tables at the grain the charts actually need, and persist intermediate results as QVDs.
326 words, about 2 min05Security and Governance: Section Access, Data Reduction, Connection Security, Governance of Published Data
SECTION ACCESS is a control statement issued in its own LOAD (or SQL SELECT ) statement and is normally placed at the very start of the script. It reads a table with uppercase field names: ACCESS ( ADMIN or USER ), an identification field ( USERID / PASSWORD for local logins, NTNAME or GROUP for domain/SSO), and optional reduction fields.
358 words, about 2 min06Deployment and Data Architecture Operations: QVD Layers, Reload Scheduling, Publishing, Environments
A mature deployment separates extract , transform and presentation layers. Extract QVDs mirror source tables with minimal change; transform QVDs hold cleansed, conformed, reusable data; the app layer consumes transform QVDs and holds almost no script logic.
339 words, about 2 min