Acquire / file · All operations

Read a BI extract file

A variant of Read another file format

Read the data held in an extract file written by a business-intelligence tool.

Status

In arcform

Not built yet

arcform does not do this yet. Its place on the roadmap

What other tools call it

Meridian's classification; an independent blind rating agreed on 95.7% of 324 rows (variant, version 3).

Duckle (1)
  • Qlik QVDread 2026-09-25

    read Qlik QVD files with a clean-room reader

EasyMorph (1)
RapidMiner Studio (1)
  • Read Hyper Fileread 2026-09-27

    Read a table from a Tableau .hyper extract file

Tableau Prep (1)
Talend (1)
  • tQVDInputread 2026-09-27

    Read data from QVD files

Background

A QVD (QlikView Data) file is a file containing a table of data exported from Qlik Sense.[1] Since 2018, the .hyper format has been the standard format used by Tableau to create extracts.[2] Hyper is Tableau's SQL engine, powering Tableau's real-time analytics and interactive exploration.[3]

When to use it

In Qlik Sense, reading data from a QVD file is typically 10-100 times faster than reading from other data sources.[1] In Qlik Sense, buffering non-changing or slowly-changing blocks of input data in QVD files makes script execution considerably faster for large data sets.[1]

Tableau introduced the .hyper format in 2018 to replace the old .tde format for extracts.[2] Beginning in early 2023, Tableau discontinued support for the .tde format on Tableau Cloud and Tableau Public.[2] Tableau Desktop 2024.2 is the last version that supports any .tde-based workbooks, data sources or bookmarks.[2] Upgrade an old .tde extract to .hyper before trying to read it, while a version of Tableau Desktop that opens it is still to hand. (Meridian's view)

The method

If a QVD file was generated with QlikView, its header is a well-formed header in the UTF-8 character set, describing the fields in the table, the layout of the data that follows and other metadata.[1] EasyMorph's Import Qlik QVD file action can load either a .qvd file's data or its metadata.[4]

Tableau's Hyper API can open existing .hyper files and read data from them.[3] .hyper files can also be opened directly in Tableau Desktop and Tableau Prep.[3] The Hyper API libraries are available for Python, C++ and Java, on Windows, macOS and Linux.[3]

Sources

  1. [1]Working with QVD files | Qlik Sense on Windows Helpdocumentation
  2. [2]About Extract Upgrades from .tde to .hyper - Tableaudocumentation
  3. [3]Tableau Hyper API | Hyperdocumentation
  4. [4]IMPORT QLIK QVD FILE [EasyMorph Help]documentation