Upgrading and uninstalling Qlik Data Gateway - Direct Access

New and enhanced features

Support for the Application Default Credentials OAuth mechanism with Google BigQuery

This version introduces support for the Application Default Credentials OAuth mechanism when using the Google BigQuery (via Direct Access gateway) connector.

For details, see Create a Google BigQuery connection.

Support for metadata commands with process isolation

Two new options have been added to the Process isolation configuration property: All and Metadata. The All option allows you to enable process isolation for both reload and metadata commands while the Metadata option allows you to enable process isolation for metadata commands only. This can be useful, for example, for customers with ODBC drivers that do not support multi-threading, but who want to run metadata commands concurrently (mainly for preview purposes).

The new options are supported via the configuration UI or via the Public API.

See also: Process isolation

Support for Brazil (br) and France (fr) regions

You can now use Direct Access gateway in the Brazil (br) and France (fr) Qlik Cloud tenant regions.

Metrics collector

In a typical customer's environment, numerous data reloads pass through Direct Access gateway into Qlik Cloud Analytics on a daily basis. The ability to log and monitor resource consumption and utilization impacted by these reloads will help customers plan their reloads accordingly.

The new metrics collector (which runs in the background on the Direct Access gateway machine) offers basic logging and monitoring of resource utilization by Direct Access gateway, connectors, and the Operating System. The metrics collector can either be configured locally in a JSON file or via the Public API.

For more information, see Metrics collector.

Resolved issues

After a disconnection from the gateway, reloads would fail intermittently with the following error:

Requested endpoint could not be provisioned due to failure to acquire a load slot: The load slot request could not be decrypted. The load slot request could not be decrypted (DirectAccess-1707)

New and enhanced features

Support for the updated Databricks OAuth authentication options

The Databricks connector was recently enhanced with two additional authentication mechanisms, which are now supported with Direct Access gateway:

• Databricks OAuth Service Principal

• Databricks OAuth User Account

Both these use the general OAuth 2.0 flow, which is supported by both Databricks-managed or Microsoft Entra ID-managed accounts.

To learn more, see Create a Databricks connection.

Overriding the default starting port set by process isolation

When process isolation is enabled, you can now override the default starting port (49152) that Direct Access gateway uses for inter-process communication with all isolated connector processes. This can be useful when the default port is in use by another process. To override the port, set the DATA_PORT_RANGE_START property to the desired port either by editing the configuration.properties file or via the Public API.

Resolved issues

Direct Access gateway 1.7.8 resolves the following issues:

• SAP SQL connector: Error when loading a table containing a UTCL data element

  The following error would occur during loading when a table contained a UTCL data element:

  Status (StatusCode="InvalidArgument", Detail="Input string was not in a correct format.

• Intermittent reload failures when using chunks recovery

  Reloads would fail intermittently with the following error:

  Object reference not set to an instance of an object. (DirectAccess-1513))

• SAP BW Connector: Data extraction issue

  Extracting data from SAP BW InfoProvider/ADSO using two values in a WHERE clause would return zero lines.

• gRPC connection failures resulting in Direct Access-1510 errors

  In rare cases, gRPC connection failures would occur, resulting in Direct Access-1510 errors. To mitigate this issue, the following improvements have been implemented:

  • A gRPC call has been added to make sure the port is available for the gRPC connection

  • The gRPC channel will be recreated when a connection is refused by a connector

New and enhanced features

Support for the SAP Report connector

From this version, customers can now access their SAP Report connector via Qlik Data Gateway - Direct Access.

Using the SAP Report Connector

Support for Direct Access gateway with Qlik Cloud Government DoD

This version adds support for using Direct Access gateway with Qlik Cloud Government DoD.

Alleviating latency caused by DNS resolution

From this version, service-to-service communication will now be performed using the IPv4 loopback address (127.0.0.1) instead of localhost. This should effectively eliminate any latency resulting from DNS resolution.

Configuring connector startup parameters

You can now increase the timeout value and number of attempts for connector startup. This might be useful when performing a considerable number of concurrent reloads. Increasing these parameters will give Direct Access gateway more time and additional attempts to run a connector before exiting with failure and requiring a restart.

Configuring connector startup

Requesting load slots asynchronously

This version introduces the option to request load slots asynchronously. Requesting load slots asynchronously alleviates temporary command pipe congestion to Direct Access gateway during creation of the reload data WebSocket to Qlik Cloud. This might be useful when performing a considerable number of concurrent reloads.

Requesting load slots asynchronously

New location for the installation logs

The installation log files will now be located in <Direct Access gateway installation folder>\data\logs, which is consistent with the location of other Direct Access gateway log files.

In previous versions, the installation log files were located in C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Local\Temp. Any logs that are still in this folder will be copied to the new location during upgrade.

Resolved issues

Direct Access gateway 1.7.7 resolves the following issues:

• Support for decreasing column size when defining custom type mappings for the ODBC (via Direct Access gateway) connector

  Added support for decreasing the column size reported by the driver when defining custom type mappings for the ODBC (via Direct Access gateway) connector. In previous versions, column size could only be increased.

• Command timeout

  Long-running commands that exceeded the default pong timeout of 45 seconds would cause the command pipe to disconnect. This issue was resolved by preventing the timeout from triggering while the Qlik Cloud Service Connection Broker is relaying a command to the Direct Access gateway Connector Agent.

• Configuration UI - Save button disabled

  The Save button would be disabled due to an invalid MAX_PROCESSES_COUNT value. The issue was resolved by automatically populating the field with a valid value.

• Configuration UI - Inconsistency between default values and initial values

  • The initial value of the Number of Concurrent Reload Processes field differed from the default value displayed in the UI for the following connectors: ODBC, SAP BW, SAP SQL, SAP ODP, and REST.

  • The initial value of the Process isolation mode field for the File connector differed from the default value displayed in the UI.

• Microsoft SQL Server NTLM authentication mode not working

  Microsoft SQL Server NTLM authentication mode stopped working when using Direct Access gateway 1.7.6.

• Reload failures under heavy load

  When performing heavy loads, reloads would sometimes fail with the following error:

  Connector error: The gRPC connection to the connector failed. ... (DirectAccess-1510)

  This issue was resolved by adding a retry mechanism.

• Intermittent reload failures in certain scenarios

  Reloads would sometimes fail with the following errors:

  • DirectAccess-4002: This issue was resolved by reducing the default value of the AGENT_DATA_PING_SKIP_THRESHOLD_SECONDS property from 60 to 15 seconds.

  • DirectAccess-2208: This issue was resolved by adding a retry mechanism.

File (via Direct Access gateway) connector: Restricting file system access to specific spaces

When using the File (via Direct Access gateway) connector, you can now restrict file system or network drive access to specific spaces. Pairing each path with spaces within your Qlik Cloud tenant means that only space members with the Can consume data role or higher will be able to access the specified path. When no space is configured, the specified paths will be accessible to all spaces.

The new configuration can be made via the public API, or directly in the configuration file on the gateway server.

Public API

File (via Direct Access gateway) connector

Support for applying changes without requiring a gateway restart

From this version, when updating the allowed paths/URLs for the File (via Direct Access gateway) and REST (via Direct Access gateway) connectors, you no longer need to restart the Direct Access gateway service to apply the changes. This is also true when making changes to the following ODBC (via Direct Access gateway) properties:

• Allowed drivers

• Allowed DSNs

• Custom type mappings

Oracle (via Direct Access gateway) connector: Support for the Oracle TNS Names connection method

This version adds support for accessing Oracle using TNS Names.

Create an Oracle connection

File (via Direct Access gateway) connector: Process isolation enabled by default

When performing a clean install of Direct Access gateway, process isolation will now be enabled by default with the Number of concurrent reload processes set to 10.

Process isolation

Allowing connections to localhost using the REST (via Direct Access gateway) connector

You can now allow the REST (via Direct Access gateway) connector to connect to localhost. This facilitates the use of local (to the gateway server) REST endpoints such as using the connector-agent/ status endpoint to determine the active number of loads on an agent.

This is also configurable using the public API, when adding local URLs (http://localhost:5050/status for example) to the restconnector_allowed_urls.txt file.

Allowing connections to localhost using the REST (via Direct Access gateway) connector

Public API

Support for using the public API to perform "load data" requests asynchronously

Performing Load Data request asynchronously on the agent significantly shortens the time the cloud service needs to wait for responses from the agent.

This feature, which was introduced in Direct Access gateway 1.7.5, is now available via the public API using the OPTIONAL_CAPABILITIES parameter.

Public API

Process isolation enhancements in heavy load scenarios

When a gateway is under heavy load with limited resources, enhancements were made to prevent the following issues:

• Connector port conflicts when process isolation is enabled

• Over-frequent attempts to start the connector process

Resolved issues

Direct Access gateway 1.7.6 resolves the following issues:

• Oracle (via Direct Access gateway) or ODBC (via Direct Access gateway) connectors: Redundant metadata calls

  When using the Oracle (via Direct Access gateway) or ODBC (via Direct Access gateway) connectors, some of the connector properties would make redundant metadata calls when no gateway was selected.

• Performance degradation due to excessive gateway metrics retrieval time

  For each reload request, gateway metrics are retrieved. The time it took to retrieve the metrics (~200 ms) would impact the reload duration. The issue was resolved by retrieving the metrics every 15 seconds instead of every load request.

• AWS Athena (via Direct Access gateway) connector: Reload failure when attempting to reload table or column names with Japanese characters

  When using the AWS Athena (via Direct Access gateway) connector, attempting to reload table or column names with Japanese characters would cause the following error:

  Unable to show the preview column data. User does not have permission to access data, or column data type is not supported.

• Google BigQuery (via Direct Access gateway) connector: Failure to add data using Data Manager

  When using the Google BigQuery (via Direct Access gateway) connector, a “Failed to Add data” error would occur when trying to add data using Data Manager.

• Password clarification when installing Direct Access gateway under a LocalSystem account

  The Password field in the Direct Access gateway installer lead some customers to believe that a password was always required when installing Direct Access gateway under a LocalSystem user account. To resolve this issue, the following clarification text was added to the installer:

  A password is only required if you are not using the default local system account.

Added logging context to metadata preview calls

To assist in troubleshooting reload failures, the following fields were added to the logs for metadata preview calls: requestguid, sessionid, and datasourceid.

Added support for "User defined credentials" to the MongoDB (via Direct Access gateway) and Google BigQuery (via Direct Access gateway) connectors

A User defined credentials field was added to the MongoDB (via Direct Access gateway) and Google BigQuery (via Direct Access gateway) connectors, thereby aligning them with the corresponding non-Direct Access gateway connectors.

When User defined credentials is selected, any user who wants to access the connection will need to input their own credentials before selecting tables or loading data. These credentials belong to a user, not a connection. User defined credentials can be saved and used in multiple connections of the same connector type.

Support for AsyncCommand with Load Data requests

Performing Load Data request asynchronously on the agent significantly shortens the time the cloud service waits for responses from the agent.

Performing Load Data requests asynchronously

Support for changing the AGENT_LOG_OPTIONS property without needing to restart the Direct Access gateway service

It is now possible to modify the AGENT_LOG_OPTIONS property without needing to restart the Direct Access gateway service. This property should only be modified if requested by Qlik Support.

Resolved issues

Direct Access gateway 1.7.5 resolves the following issues:

• Errors returned for valid operations

  The connector agent would sometimes return a "500" error for valid load and event calls.

• Configuration API:

  • The "Max process count" property for REST and FILE connectors was updated to cover values between 2-100

  • A default value was added to the AGENT_LOG_OPTIONS property

  • DCaaS log level values were updated

• Keep alive events:

  • Keep alive events would sometimes not be encrypted

  • An incorrect response to release cloud resources would be sent when the session on the agent was no longer active

Support for overriding the default Windows service account during setup

In previous Direct Access gateway versions, it was possible to change the Windows service account only after the installation, and only interactively (on each Direct Access gateway machine). Direct Access gateway 1.7.4 introduces the ability to install Direct Access gateway under a non-default Windows service account. This option is available when using the setup wizard and when performing a silent installation.

For more information, see Stage two: Install Direct Access gateway on a server behind the firewall protecting your data sources

Support for Windows Server 2025

Direct Access gateway versions 1.7.0 and later have been certified for installation on Windows Server 2025.

Resolved issues

Direct Access gateway 1.7.4 resolves the following issues:

• Security hardening

  When using the File (via Direct Access gateway) connector, all file operations would be performed under the "NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM" Windows service account. The issue was resolved by adding the ability to override the default Windows service account during setup.

• Google BigQuery (via Direct Access gateway) connector: Error processing TIMESTAMP data outside of a specific range

  When processing TIMESTAMP data outside the range of 1400-9999 (years), the following error would occur:

  The data contains unsupported data type or row content. Invalid row status.

• Custom Windows service account not maintained after upgrade

  After upgrade, the designated Direct Access gateway service account would be changed back to the default local account (LocalSystem).

• Reload error

  During reload, due to an issue related to the encryption of keepAlive events (sent from Qlik Cloud to the gateway), the following error would sometimes occur:

  Internal error. (Connector error: Reload web socket was aborted due to a failure (DirectAccess-1103))

Troubleshooting improvements

• Direct Access gateway machine metrics (cores, disk space, memory, CPU, and so on) will now be propagated to the remote logging to assist with troubleshooting.
• The log message timestamp will now be in UTC format for all logs, except the logs for SAP connectors.
• The File (via Direct Access gateway) connector log name now includes the port number (instead of the process ID).
• The File (via Direct Access gateway) connector logging messages now includes a Process ID column.

ODBC (via Direct Access gateway) connector enhancement

When using the ODBC (via Direct Access gateway) connector, ANSI ODBC drivers (which are not supported) will now be excluded from the list of ODBC drivers shown in the connector.

Resolved issues

Direct Access gateway 1.7.3 resolves the following issues:

• REST (via Direct Access gateway) connector: Reload failure

  Reload of large data structures would sometimes fail with the following error:

  Received message exceeds the maximum configured message size.

• REST (via Direct Access gateway) connector: Overly restrictive URL allowed list

  URLs without a trailing slash would be incorrectly blocked, whereas the same URLs with a trailing slash would be allowed.

• ODBC (via Direct Access gateway) connector: Excessive memory consumption

  When using Multiple SELECT in the loading script, the VRAM memory on the source system would not be freed, and would continue to grow with each reload.

• MySQL (via Direct Access gateway) connector: Data type issue

  When using the MySQL (via Direct Access gateway) connector to load a table with an "int(9) unsigned" data type, the data for that column would be returned as -1.

• SAP SQL (via Direct Access gateway) connector: MixedMode not working

  The MixedMode connection string property would not work as expected.

• SQL-type data source: Load script issue

  When connecting to a SQL-type data source, the "TableName" in the load script would be incorrectly placed in the middle of the table definition instead of at the beginning of the load script.

• Databricks (via Direct Access gateway) connector: Security hardening

  Data loaded via the Databricks (via Direct Access gateway) connector will now always use SSL for the communication and data in transit. The previous option to enable or disable SSL has been removed.

• Security hardening

  End-to-end encryption would not be mutually enforced by for logging command payloads that returned customer-hosted logs from the Qlik Cloud Administration activity center.

Setting a chunk recovery resume threshold

You can now set a threshold (in minutes) for the chunks recovery duration. If the reload has not resumed by the time the recovery duration threshold has been reached, it will fail with an appropriate message.

This option is useful for reloads that might otherwise exceed the three hour limit, following a long recovery. For example, let's say it takes 90 minutes to retrieve the data from the database, but as soon as the reload starts, one of the chunks is corrupted. In this case, all of the chunks will be stored in the cache, and sent from the cache. In such a scenario, the entire reload process (storing in cache + actual reload) could take three hours to complete.

See also Setting a chunk recovery duration threshold.

Resolved issues

Direct Access gateway 1.7.2 resolves the following issues:

• Missing configuration for the REST (via Direct Access gateway) connector

  The REST_MAX_PROCESS_COUNT parameter was missing from the configuration.properties file in Direct Access gateway 1.7.1

• Auto-restart of Direct Access gateway processes not working as expected

  Direct Access gateway processes would sometimes not restart automatically when they crashed or were otherwise terminated.

• Chunk recovery cache folders created in the wrong location

  When the OVERRIDE_CHUNKS_CACHE_DIR setting in the configuration.properties file was empty, the chunk recovery cache folders would be created in the [install folder]\ConnectorAgent folder instead of C:\ProgramData\Qlik\Gateway\tmp (the default folder).

• Reload failure in Chunk Recovery mode

  When working in Chunk Recovery mode, reloads would occasionally fail with an DirectAccess-4021 error. The issue was caused by the EODAck arriving at the agent slightly after the EODAck timeout. The issue was resolved by marginally increasing the EODAck timeout.

• File (via Direct Access gateway) connector logging level issue

  The DEBUG logging level for the File (via Direct Access gateway) connector would be ignored.

• The contents of the [Direct Access gateway install folder]\data\logs\reloads folder were never purged

  Old JSON files were never purged from the [Direct Access gateway install folder]\data\logs\reloads folder. The accumulation of numerous logs might consume a significant amount of disk space over time. In addition, backing up this folder (which could contain thousands of log file) would also present a challenge.

• Security hardening

  This improvement adds an additional layer of encryption to events and messages sent between Qlik Cloud and Direct Access gateway, that contain sensitive data such as Pod IP and Gateway ID.

New features and enhancements

• REST Connector

  The new REST (via Direct Access gateway) connector provides secure access to private REST API endpoints via Direct Access gateway, allowing you to stream data directly into your Qlik Sense app.

  For more information, see REST data sources.

  Information note

  The REST (via Direct Access gateway) connector will be rolled out to Qlik Cloud regions in four phases, with phase 4 scheduled to be completed by February 17th.

  • Phase 1: SE (Sweden), JP (Japan), and UK (United Kingdom)
  • Phase 2: DE (Germany), SG (Singapore), AP (Asia Pacific), and IN (India)

  • Phase 3: US (United States) and Qlik Cloud Government

  • Phase 4: EU (European Union)
    

• Overriding the default chunks cache directory

  For each reload operation, Direct Access gateway can cache data chunks in memory and offload them to disk (when the size allocated for caching is exceeded). You can override the default chunks cache directory (C:\ProgramData\Qlik\Gateway\tmp) directory if you do not have enough disk space on the system drive.

  For more information, see Overriding the default chunks cache directory.

• Overriding the default number of tables retrieved when working with the ODBC (via Direct Access gateway) Connector

  By default, 10,000 tables are retrieved for selection, which might not be enough when working with very large databases. This version introduce the ability to override the default by increasing the ODBC_TABLES_LIMIT_FOR_GENERICODBC property in the Direct Access gateway configuration.properties file.

  For more information, see Maximum number of tables to unload.

• Multiple catalog support with the Google BigQuery (via Direct Access gateway) Connector

  The Google BigQuery (via Direct Access gateway) Connector now supports accessing multiple catalogs (the equivalent of Google BigQuery projects) in a single connection.

  For more information, see Create a Google BigQuery Connection.

• Support for Unity Catalog with the Databricks (via Direct Access gateway) Connector

  The Databricks (via Direct Access gateway) Connector now supports accessing data in Unity Catalog on Databricks.

  For more information, see Create a Databricks connection.

• Mitigating data errors caused by the ODBC driver when using the ODBC (via Direct Access gateway) connector

  Sometimes, due to an issue with the vendor ODBC driver's handling of source data types, either an error will occur during the reload or incorrect data will be loaded to Qlik Cloud. In such cases, you can override the Qlik Cloud data type or its specification (scale or precision, for example).

  For more information, see Overriding default the Qlik Cloud data type when working with the ODBC (via Direct Access gateway) connector.

• Relocation of connector start, exit, and restart events log events

  From Direct Access gateway 1.7.1, connector start, exit, and restart events will be written to the Direct Access gateway (DirectAccessAgent) log file. In previous versions, they were written to the Connector agent logs (connector-agent_logs_<date>) log file.

Resolved issues

Direct Access gateway 1.7.1 resolves the following issues:

• In certain scenarios, reload performance would be impacted when enabling the RELOAD_CACHE_MEMORY_MB option (which caches data for reload in the event of a problem).

• When enabling the RELOAD_CACHE_MEMORY_MB option, reloads would sometimes fail with the following error, indicating that access is denied or that the file could not be found:

  (Connector error: data loading error (DirectAccess-4008) (DirectAccess-4001))

• In certain scenarios, mainly if the port required by the connector was not available, the connector would continue to crash, even when process isolation was enabled.

• Direct Access gateway would sometimes try to reconnect to the data source, even after the reload completed successfully.

• A "Could not find file" error would sometimes be encountered when the connector agent tried to read a chunk from the disk after it had been loaded to memory.

• When working with the SAP BW connector, the following error would occur:

  Error when parsing '0TCT_C03': The given key 'CHABASNM' was not present in the dictionary.

  The issue was fixed by adding support for older transports without the CHABASNM metadata field.

• When the configuration.properties file contained duplicate entries, it would not be possible to start the Direct Access gateway service.

• When trying to connect to the Azure SQL Database (via Direct_Access gateway) data source using the Azure Active Directory authentication method, the Test Connection operation would fail with the following error:

  Communication link failure - ERROR [08S01] [Qlik][SqlServer] Connection broken unexpectedly

• In certain cases, when Direct Access gateway became disconnected from Qlik Cloud, it could have taken up to 10 minutes to reconnect. During this time, no reloads would start. This time has been reduced to 45 seconds.

  If you notice Direct Access gateway taking significantly longer than 45 seconds to reconnect, you can force it to reconnect, as described in Forcing Direct Access gateway to reconnect to Qlik Cloud.

New features and enhancements

• File connector

  The new File (via Direct Access gateway) connector provides secure file system access via Direct Access gateway, allowing you to stream data directly into your Qlik Sense app.

  For more information, see File (via Direct Access gateway).

• Improved performance with async command support

  Async command support increases efficiency by enabling Direct Access gateway to handle multiple commands simultaneously, as opposed to one at a time.

   

Resolved issues

Direct Access gateway 1.7.0 resolves the following issues:

• Snowflake connector

  Loading data with special characters would fail with a "SQL compilation error".

• Silent installation

  Installing Direct Access gateway silently would launch an interactive prompt to repair prerequisite software.

• Oracle (via Direct Access gateway) connector performance

  Loading data with the Oracle (via Direct Access gateway) connector would be significantly slower than using ODBC driver directly.

• ODBC (via Direct Access gateway) connector crashes

  The ODBC (via Direct Access gateway) connector would sometimes crash due to a SQL Server Simba driver bug.

• Intermittent reload failures

  Reloads of multiple apps would fail intermittently with the following error (excerpt):

  Connector Datagateway Space:SQLCLUSTER01 not found (Requested endpoint could not be provisioned due to failure to acquire a load slot: The response body of the connector load info request was empty.

New features and enhancements

• Process isolation is now turned on by default

  In previous versions, process isolation mode was turned off by default. From Direct Access gateway 1.6.9, it will be turned on by default, but only with a clean installation. If you are upgrading, your existing process isolation configuration will be preserved (off or on, depending on what it was before the upgrade).

  To learn more about process isolation, see Process isolation

• Removed configuration.properties file

  To prevent customers mistakenly modifying the wrong configuration.properties file, the configuration.properties template file has been removed from the Direct Access gateway installation folder. Now, there will be only one configuration.properties file, located in C:\ProgramData\Qlik\Gateway.

Resolved issues

Direct Access gateway 1.6.9 resolves the following issues with the chunk recovery feature:

• Chunks not deleted after reload

  Processed chunks would sometimes not be deleted from the disk after a reload.

• Chunks not deleted after a crash

  Processed chunks would sometimes not be deleted from the disk following a Direct Access gateway crash.

• High memory consumption

  High memory consumption would sometimes occur during reload of stored chunks.

For more information about the chunk recovery feature, see Memory for cached data chunks

New features and enhancements

• Data chunks recovery mechanism

  This version introduces support for sending missing or corrupted data chunks. To control the size in memory of the reloaded data chunks, a new property has been added to the configuration.properties file: RELOAD_CACHE_MEMORY_MB

  For more information about the chunk recovery feature, see Memory for cached data chunks

• .NET 6.0.x no longer required

  From this version, running Direct Access gateway no longer requires .NET 6.0.x. Prior to installing Direct Access gateway, new customers should install .NET 4.8 (needed for the installation) as well as .NET 8.0 and ASP.NET Core Runtime (for working with Direct Access gateway) only.

  For more information about Direct Access gateway prerequisites, see System prerequisites

• Improved batch operations for dependent processes

  From this version, dependent processes will be checked in parallel instead of sequentially, thereby avoiding exceptions due to modification of the process list during runtime.

  To learn more about process isolation, see Process isolation

• Improved troubleshooting

  More context (for example such as "process ID" and "commit size") was added to the resource usage warnings in the logs.

Resolved issues

Direct Access gateway 1.6.8 resolves the following issues:

• Misleading error message

  Following a restart to the gateway (either manually or due to a crash), requests might be sent to the connector agent (ConnectorAgent.exe) before it has been initialized. In such a case, the error message would be misleading. Now, the error message will indicate that the gateway is disconnected.

• Reload failures due to disconnection

  Direct Access gateway disconnections after the initial load would sometimes cause subsequent reload to fail, with the following error:

  Requested endpoint could not be provisioned due to failure to acquire a load slot: Command getReloadSlot error for reload

  Reload failures due to pod shutdown

  The Analytics engine would sometimes cache connections from earlier sessions and send a request to a pod that had been requested to shutdown. This would cause reloads to fail with the following error:

  Connector error: data loading error (DirectAccess-4008)

• Reload stuck after restarting the Direct Access gateway service

  In certain scenarios, the connector-agent would not attempt to reconnect following a disconnection during the reload, resulting in the following error:

  Reload web socket was aborted due to a failure (DirectAccess-1103)

• Amazon Redshift connector: SELECT table would populate duplicate columns

  When tables existed in an external schema that was referenced from the database created in Datashare, duplicate columns would be shown in the DLE/ Data Manager preview.

New features and enhancements

• Support for automatic port allocation when working with process isolation

  Previously, it was not possible to set the Maximum number of concurrent reload processes higher than 10 when using the default port number and range settings. From this version, ports will be allocated automatically, allowing the number of concurrent reload processes to be greater than 10.

• Enhanced metadata paging when working with the SAP SQL (via Direct Access gateway) connector

  With this enhancement, when 10,000 tables or more are retrieved, the tables will be retrieved in batches of 10,000 to prevent timeouts.

Resolved issues

Direct Access gateway 1.6.7 resolves the following issues:

• Expired reloads not released when using process isolation

  When using process isolation, connector processes would not be released for expired reloads.

• Amazon Redshift sessions continue running despite canceling the app

  Amazon Redshift sessions would continue running until the query finished, even if the running QCS app was canceled.

• Resolved security vulnerabilities

  • Direct Access gateway connectors would bind all services to 0.0.0.0, allows connections from every IP address on the local machine, potentially exposing the server to every possible network.
  • Direct Access gateway would attempt to load MPR.dll from a non-existent, dynamically generated directory within the user's temporary files path. Due to the absence of MPR.dll in the expected location, an attacker could place a malicious DLL in this path, which the installer could subsequently load and execute.

• Reload stuck after restarting the Direct Access gateway service

  When using non-select queries and a Stored Procedure, the reload would hang for several hours after restarting the Direct Access gateway service.

• Data preview and reload issues

  Data preview and reload issues would sometimes be encountered when using the ODBC (via Direct Access gateway) connector to access Microsoft Fabric.

• Error when adding an ORDER BY clause

  Adding an ORDER BY clause would cause an error when using the ODBC (via Direct Access gateway) connector and SQL Anywhere 17.

New features and enhancements

Direct Access gateway 1.6.6 introduces the following features and enhancements:

• Support for accessing ServiceNow via Direct Access gateway

  This version introduces support for the ServiceNow (via Direct Access gateway) connector, allowing customers to securely access firewalled ServiceNow data sources over a strictly outbound, encrypted, and mutually authenticated connection.

• Support for new authentication methods when using the following Direct Access gateway connectors:

  • Azure Synapse Analytics: Azure OAuth and Azure Active Directory
  • Azure SQL Database: Azure OAuth and Azure Active Directory
  • Snowflake: OAuth
  • Databricks: Azure OAuth
  • MongoDB: SCRAM-SHA-256 and LDAP

• Enhanced metadata paging when working with ODBC connectors

  With this enhancement, when 10,000 tables or more are retrieved, the tables will be retrieved in batches of 10,000 to prevent timeouts.

• .NET 8.x requirement

  From this version, customers will be required to install both .NET 6 and .NET 8.x in order to work with Direct Access gateway. During installation or upgrade, setup will install them automatically if they are not already installed.

• Improved supportability

  To aid troubleshooting, additional logging has been added that measures the duration of Direct Access gateway requests.

Resolved issues

Direct Access gateway 1.6.6 resolves the following issues:

• If the connection between Direct Access gateway and Qlik Cloud was idle for 30 seconds or more, the reload operation would sometimes fail with the following error: Invalid object name '#<TempTableName>' (indicating that the Direct Access gateway temp tables are unavailable).

  To remedy this, a new Load request timeout setting was added. The new parameter sets the reload session duration for ODBC connectors and has a default value of 20 seconds.

• Canceling a reload would sometimes cause an ODBC process creation and termination loop.
• The connection between Direct Access gateway and Qlik Cloud Services would sometimes end abruptly, without apparent cause.

• The Direct Access gateway connection retry interval would grow continually but never reset itself. Restarting the Direct Access gateway service would be the only way to reset the retry interval.

• When using incorrect syntax to call a Stored Procedure from Oracle, the reload would operation would hang for several hours instead of terminating immediately with an informative error.

New features and enhancements

Direct Access gateway 1.6.5 introduces the following features and enhancements:

• Support for the SAP ODP connector

  This version introduces the ability to access a SAP ODP source via Direct Access gateway. To facilitate this, a new Data gateway field has been added to the SAP ODP connector. The new field allows customers to choose which gateway to use to access their SAP ODP source.

  See also: SAP ODP Connector

• Extended logging capabilities

  This version introduces a new logger that Qlik Support can use to troubleshoot issues with specific gateway components.

• Newly supported region

  Japan is now supported as a Qlik Cloud tenant region.

• Performance enhancement

  Improved memory allocations for encrypted sessions.

Resolved issues

Direct Access gateway 1.6.5 resolves the following issues:

• Security vulnerability

  Secrets would be written to the DCAAS log when working with the ODBC connector.

• Process isolation performance

  Processes would take a long time to start under heavy load.

• Incorrect installation path

  Installing Direct Access gateway would always set Qlik as the root folder, even if the user chose a different folder in the setup wizard.

New features and enhancements

• Support for viewing and downloading log files from the Administration activity center

  This version introduces the ability to view Direct Access gateway log files in the Administration activity center and share them with Qlik Support if needed. Under normal circumstances, there is no reason to view the log files, but should you experience repeated failures or other issues, the log files will often help pinpoint the cause.

  See also: Viewing and downloading log files

• Support for installing Direct Access gateway silently

  Customers can now install Direct Access gateway silently, which is useful if you need to install Direct Access gateway on several machines throughout your organization.

  See also: Silently installing Direct Access gateway

• Improved session continuity

  When a reload session expired, a DirectAccess-1012 error would sometimes occur. Now, Direct Access gateway will try to keep the reload session alive by pinging Qlik Cloud more frequently.

Resolved issues

Direct Access gateway 1.6.4 resolves the following issues:

• Incorrect parameter name in the configuration.properties file

  When performing a new installation of Direct Access gateway, the EXTEND_FIRST_REQUEST_TIMEOUT parameter name in the C:\ProgramData\Qlik\Gateway\configuration.properties file would incorrectly be called FIRST_REQUEST_TIME_EXTENSION.

• Reload pod availability

  When multiple reloads shared the same reload ID, the number of reload pods in QCS would reach the maximum.

Direct Access gateway 1.6.3 includes the following enhancements and bug fixes:

• Data loss prevention

  In previous versions, to prevent potential data loss, Direct Access gateway did not automatically reconnect to the data source during a reload. From this version, Direct Access gateway will now automatically reconnect to the data source as needed. To prevent data loss, the completed reload summary will be verified before reconnecting. If data loss is detected, the reload will fail.

• Timeout for reload sessions

  In rare scenarios, the reload session would stay alive indefinitely. To prevent such occurrences, this version introduces a three-hour timeout for reload sessions.

• Timeout extension for load requests

  Reloads would sometimes fail with the following errors:

  Connector error: The session does not exist (DirectAccess-1509)

  Connector error: The stream session expired for the load data request (DirectAccess-1012)

  To mitigate this issue, a Load request timeout parameter(for extending the load request timeout) was added to Direct Access gateway settings.

  Customers who frequently encounter these errors should try setting the value to 5-10 minutes.

  For detailed instructions, see Load request timeout

• Support for detailed connection error messages

  Added support for viewing detailed connection error messages when using ODBC-based via Direct Access gateway connectors. Customers can now set the ShowErrorDetailMessage parameter in the Advanced connector settings to "true" to see the full error returned by the ODBC driver. The detailed error message will be show in the Data load editor.

  Information noteThe error message is provided in its entirety by the data source you are using. Qlik does not append any additional information to the error message or edit it in any way.

• Handling multiple reloads with the same reload ID

  From this version, the engine session ID will be used to distinguish between multiple reloads with the same reload ID. This will prevent potential conflicts, resulting in reloads failing with the following error:

  Connector error: data loading error (DirectAccess-4008

Direct Access gateway 1.6.2 resolves an issue that would sometimes cause the Connector Agent to crash when working in process isolation mode.

New features and improvements

Direct Access gateway 1.6.1 introduces several important features and enhancements, improving overall stability and performance.

• Support for spreading reloads across multiple connector processes

  Connector process isolation has been added to Direct Access gateway. This is an opt-in feature, meaning that it is off by default. Process isolation allows administrators with direct access to the gateway server operating system to control how many processes are available for reloads per connector type. Spreading reloads across multiple connector processes increases the level of isolation by reducing the number of reloads running concurrently on each connector process. This in turn can improve overall Direct Access gateway stability in cases where connector crashes have occurred.

  To learn more about process isolation, see Process isolation

• Added the ability to disable chunking when working with the SAP BW (via Direct Access gateway) connector

  This version introduces the BEX_ONE_CHUNK application parameter for the SAP BW (via Direct Access gateway) connector. When accessing SAP BW directly from Qlik Cloud (that is, not via Direct access gateway), to optimize performance, the result set is divided into chunks in the SAP backend and read as separate threads. However, when accessing SAP BW via Direct Access gateway, dividing the result set into chunks has no real advantage. On the contrary, it consumes more of the shared memory in SAP as it requires an additional temp table to be created for the duration of the data transfer. It's possible (though usually not required) to start chunking by setting BEX_ONE_CHUNK:false in the appsettings.json file, which is located in the SAP connector binaries folder.

• Diagnostics improvements for SAP BW (via Direct Access gateway) and SAP SQL (via Direct Access gateway) connectors

  For SAP BW (via Direct Access gateway) and SAP SQL (via Direct Access gateway) connector logs, a _port suffix was added before the log file name extension, and a ProcessID=### message was added to the connector's log files in order to distinguish between events from new instances of the connector listening on the same port.

• Reconnection improvements

  The reconnection mechanism during reload has been improved so that Direct Access gateway no longer needs to connect to the pod that started the reload (as was previously the case). Now, instead of repeatedly trying to connect to the pod that started the reload (which often resulted in reload failures), it will connect to the first available pod.

Resolved issues

Direct Access gateway 1.6.0 resolves the following issues:

• ODBC via Direct Access gateway connector log

  When reloads were performed from different data sources, processes from one data source would erroneously appear in the logging of the other data source.

• Missing file in setup

  The configuration.properties file would not be copied during the Direct Access gateway installation.

• Reload error during Qlik Cloud resource scaling

  Qlik Cloud resource scaling would sometimes result in a DirectAccess-1006 error. An enhancement was made to improve handling of certain Qlik Cloud resource scaling scenarios that occur during application reloads performed via Direct Access gateway.

• Snowflake connection failure

  Connecting to Snowflake via the ODBC (via Direct Access gateway) connector would fail.

• Debugging application script failure in DLE

  Debugging application scripts in the Data Load Editor (DLE) with the Limit Results option enabled would sometimes fail with the following error:

  Connector error: Invalid load request (DirectAccess-1006).

Resolved issues:

• ODBC (via Direct Access gateway) connector: The connector would sometimes crash when canceling reloads of large tables. An improvement was made to help prevent this.

• Microsoft SQL Server (via Direct Access gateway) connector: When attempting to establish a connection to a SQL Server hosted on older Windows Server versions, the connection would fail due to a TLS compatibility issue and the following error would be returned:

  Please check the values for Username‚ Password‚ Host and other properties. Description: Client unable to establish connection - ERROR [08001] [Qlik][SqlServer] Problem establishing connection to the server.

  The SQL Server driver has been updated to correct the problem.

• SAP SQL (via Direct Access gateway) connector: When attempting to preview a table, the following error would sometimes occur:

  Exception of Type System.OutOfMemoryException

• SAP SQL (via Direct Access gateway) connector: Attempting to preview a table would sometimes time out after a few minutes with the following error:

  Request could not be completed.

• SAP SQL (via Direct Access gateway) and SAP BW (via Direct Access gateway) connectors: Added diagnostic information to the logs to assist in troubleshooting multiple concurrent requests.

New features and enhancements:

• Provides support for the new ODBC (via Direct Access gateway) connector.

• The Version column in the Administration activity center will now display the Direct Access gateway version instead of the RepAgent (one of its sub-components) version.

Resolved issues:

• Upgrading Direct Access gateway would reset advanced ODBC Connector logging settings (such as log file retention and maximum size) to default.
• In rare cases, the ODBC connector would crash and could not be restarted by the Direct Access gateway agent.
• When a connection failed or the SQL query was not valid, a generic "Offset and length were out of bounds..." error would be returned instead of the actual error cause.
• In rare scenarios, hub reloads would fail with a "DirectAccess-4008" error for apps larger than 3 GB that had extended delays or processing after the initial gateway query. Additional logging has been added to assist in identifying any related issues.

Resolved issues:

• Changing the ODBC_LOG_LEVEL value in the C:\ProgramData\Qlik\Gateway\configuration.properties file would have no effect.

• Reload would fail with the following error if an active Direct Access gateway connection was not used for several minutes:

  Connector error: Invalid load request (DirectAccess-1006)

  The issue was resolved by not timing out if the session is still alive.

• Loading tables with numerous columns from MySQL and PostgreSQL would sometimes fail with the following error:

  System.InvalidOperationException: Failed to HPACK encode the headers

• When users did not have privileges on a Managed Space containing the Direct Access gateway, the following unclear error would be shown:

  Requested endpoint could not be provisioned due to failure to acquire a load slot: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.

  The error message was improved with a more accurate description of the issue.

• Multiple reload attempts would sometimes fail due to excessive memory consumption.

Features and enhancements:

Direct Access gateway checks its health periodically. Starting from this version, the health check will restart the Direct Access gateway service if it is unresponsive for five minutes.

Resolved issues:

• When starting a reload with a query that returns metadata immediately but only returns the first data chunk several minutes later, the following error would sometimes occur:

  Connector error: data loading error (DirectAccess-4008)

• In certain scenarios, Direct Access gateway would not reconnect to Qlik Cloud when a reload was interrupted.

• In rare situations, the following error would be encountered during reloads:

  No connection could be made because the target machine actively refused it.

• When connecting to SQL Server, special characters in passwords would not be encoded correctly, resulting in the following error:

  Command test connection returned non-success: Error message: Please check the values for Username‚ Password‚ Host and other properties. Description: Access credentials are not valid for this connection.

• The ODBC connector would sometimes crash when aborting load activity from the user interface while the query was returning data.

• In rare scenarios related to heavy loads, reloads would sometimes fail with the following error:

  Connector error: Unknown reason:. Index was outside the bounds of the array. (DirectAccess-1500)

Updated the CA certificates needed for authenticating the Qlik Cloud tenant.

This version resolves the following issue:

Qlik Data Gateway - Direct Access 1.3.1 is prone to excessive CPU utilization in certain scenarios. Version 1.3.2 resolves this issue and contains no other changes. To prevent CPU-related failures, we encourage all customers to upgrade to version 1.3.2 immediately.

This version includes the CA bundle for Qlik Cloud Government and resolves several issues.

CA bundle file for Qlik Cloud Government

The CA bundle authenticates the identity of the Qlik Cloud tenant, thereby ensuring a trusted connection.

In previous Direct Access gateway versions, the CA bundle file for Qlik Cloud Government customers was provided by Qlik as needed. From this version, the CA bundle file is included in the installation.

In a default setup, the CA bundle file is installed to the following location: C:\Program Files\Qlik\ConnectorAgent\caBundle]qcg_ca_bundle.pem

Resolved issues

• A security vulnerability was identified whereby the HTTP client used for proxy connectivity would follow a redirect.

• The Direct Access gateway agent would sometimes crash with the following error:

  Unable to write data to the transport connection: An established connection was aborted by the software in your host machine

• An exception would sometimes occur during log initialization, which would cause the Direct Access gateway to hang on restart.
• Reload session handling was improved to prevent unnecessary timeouts.
• The Direct Access gateway Version column in the Administration activity center would indicate the wrong version.
• The agent would continue to send data to the gateway after the user stopped the task or the quota limit was reached.
• End-to-end encryption for Data Gateway would not be enabled by default and was controlled by runtime flags.

This version resolves the following issues:

• Version 1.2 of Qlik Data Gateway – Direct Access might be prevented from installing due to an issue with its digital signature.
• Configuration files would be overwritten during upgrade, resulting in changes being lost

Features and enhancements:

• Added support for SAP BW and SAP SQL sources. For information on setting up connectivity to these sources, see SAP NetWeaver.

Resolved issues:

• Improved stability and recoverability of the Qlik Data Gateway - Direct Access service, eliminating the need to manually restart the service
• Support for overwriting the default Direct Access gateway installation and configuration parameters

Features and enhancements:

• Added Windows Server 2022 support

Resolved issues:

• Resolved a potential stability issue related to choosing a custom path during setup

1.1.0

October 18, 2022

Features and enhancements:

• Support for Oracle Wallets
• Support for Google BigQuery
• Improved error messages

Resolved issues:

• Improved system recoverability after driver crashes
• The Qlik Data Gateway - Direct Access service would sometimes stop unexpectedly