F9 Group Marketing and Technology Blog

Content Aggregated From: 4guysfromrolla.com

A picture is worth a 1,000 words… This adage rings especially true when it comes to reporting. Charts summarize and illuminate patterns in data in a way that long tables of numbers simply cannot. Web developers have long searched for ways to express numerical data in a graphical format; until recently, doing so required the use of an open source or third-party charting or reporting package or some homegrown technique using HTML, GDI+, or some other technology. In September 2008 Microsoft released a free charting suite named Microsoft Chart Controls for the .NET Framework 3.5 SP1. The Microsoft Chart Controls are an encompassing set of charts for WinForms and ASP.NET applications. Despite being a first release, the Chart Controls suite offers a wide array of chart types and charting features. The Chart Controls offer all of the standard chart types – line charts, bar charts, pie charts, and so forth – as well as more specialized ones, like pyramid and bubble charts. The Chart Controls suite offers a comprehensive set of charting features, including support for multiple series, customizable legends, trend lines, and labels. And the Chart Controls API makes it easy to sort, search, filter, group, and export the chart data. Unfortunately, this first version of the Chart Controls has limited support for customizing the chart from the Designer. There are no wizards to guide you through customizing the chart’s look and feel and specifying its data source. Instead, you have to set the properties and bind the chart data yourself. While the Microsoft Chart Controls have some rough edges, their cost (free), number of chart types, and array of supported charting features make them an excellent choice for adding charts to an ASP.NET web application