Differences Among Query, Workbook and View

Many people are confused by the differences among: Query, Workbook, and View.

Here are my thoughts on the subject:

A query definition is saved on the server. Never anywhere else.

Although people say a workbook contains a query (or several queries); it does not. It contains a reference to a query. The workbook can be saved on the server; or anywhere else that you might save an Excel workbook.

What happens if someone changes the query definition on the server?

Answer: the next time you refresh the query in the Excel workbook, the new query definition replaces the old query definition in the workbook. Maybe. It depends on what change was made.

For example, if someone added a Condition to the query definition, the workbook will be virtually invisible to this. The Condition is available; but, is not implemented in the workbook. (Until the user of the workbook manually adds the view of the Condition and then activates it.)

For example, if someone changed the definition of a KF in the query definition, the revised KF will show up in place of the old KF in the workbook.

But ... if, for example, someone deleted the old KF and added a new KF, we get a different story. Now the old KF no longer appears (it does not exist); but, the new KF does not appear (it was not marked to be visible in the workbook).

About workbooks as views ... OK, a workbook may very well have a certain "view" of the query (drilldown, filters, et cetera). And, if the workbook is saved to the server in a Role where everyone can access it, this is good. But, if the workbook is saved to one's favorites, then this "view" is only accessible to that individual. Which may be good. Or may not.

A "saved view", on the other hand is stored on the server. So, it is available to all.

If you navigate in a workbook you can back up. You can back up, though, only as far as you navigated in the current session. You cannot back up to where you were in the middle of last week's session. Unless you saved that navigation state as a "saved view". Then, you can jump to that view at any time.

The downside of saved views is that they are easy for anyone to set up and difficult for most to delete.