Microsoft has released a chart control with .net framework 3.5. I believe it is licensed from Dundas and certainly has the Dundas look and feel. The functionality looks good but in my travels there are two graphing systems I have used, one for the client side and one for the server side.
On the server side I usually pre-generate graphs so that if there is lots of user traffic, database access is minimized. The client does not get one of those pesky 'loading data' messages. The server side graphic files are recreated on a periodic basis, with the web page referencing the image file (PNG, GIF etc). The package I have used is ZedGraph. It is open source however there doesn't seem to have been any project activity in over a year. It is easy to use and I had the samples up and running in about 5 minutes.
On the client side interactivity rules. There are a few open source packages around ( flot, plotkit ) but they are fairly basic. I paid the few dollars for Emprise Charts and have been very happy. The interactive features are great, especially the zoom and mouse-over features. I believe there is a free version that gives limited use and a watermark on graph backgrounds. I highly recommend Emprise Charts. I've combined Ext, .Net web services and Emprise in a complete solution that is quite slick. I basically loop through an Ext datastore and load up the graph points.
Deciding on whether to render on server or on client really depends on what your users will be looking at. If your db queries are expensive in terms of time to get the data, server side is best however if you can do it, client side rendering with Ajax will give your users a better interactive experience.
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)