NewHub 3.0 for Qlik Sense is coming

If you’re building mashups in Qlik Sense – depending on how they were developed – chances are you’ve eventually encountered this: sluggish object loading, delayed dashboard rendering, and frustrated users who bounce before your visuals even appear. It’s not just annoying, it’s a performance problem that undermines the whole point of visual analytics.

We recently ran a series of benchmarks comparing two popular methods for handling Qlik object metadata: the Capability API versus Enigma.js. The findings were clear and surprising. One approach consistently delivered significantly faster results, cutting initial load time by more than half.

In this post, we’ll break down what’s really slowing down your mashup, share how we achieved a dramatic performance boost, and walk through the trade-offs of ditching abstraction in favor of raw speed and control.

We ran tests comparing two common approaches to working with Qlik objects metadata:

• Capability API: high-level, easy to use
• Enigma.js: low-level, direct access to the Qlik Engine

  The result?

In almost every scenario, Enigma.js was up to 3x faster.

A mashup that took 4 seconds to load on the first render now takes around 1.5 seconds with Enigma.js.

What we observed

With the Capability API, Qlik injects a lot of overhead into the page:

• JSON config files
• Multiple CSS and JS libraries
• Extra wrappers and rendering logic

While it’s great for speed of development, it’s not ideal when speed of experience matters.

We stripped that away using pure Enigma.js, manually managing object models and rendering only what we needed – and the difference was immediate.

The Trade-Offs

Going full Enigma isn’t for everyone – and that’s okay.

You lose the simplicity of app.getObject()
You take on the responsibility of rendering logic
You have to think more like an engine developer than a dashboard builder
But if your goal is control and performance, it pays off.

Less weight, less abstraction, and a noticeably faster user experience.

Props to Qlik

Let’s take a moment to appreciate something:

Qlik gives us access to their engine through multiple JavaScript libraries.

That’s rare in the BI space.

And it opens up a world of possibilities for anyone willing to explore under the hood – from lightweight mashups/web apps to full custom apps that push the engine in creative ways.

At Cluster, we specialize in designing high-performance, custom Qlik web apps that go beyond the basics. Whether you’re battling slow load times or need more control over your dashboard experience, we can help you harness the full power of Enigma.js and the Qlik Engine.

Let’s talk!