Microsoft® SQL Server® Reporting Services Recipes: for Designing Expert Reports

Part II. BI Dashboards and Elements

• Creating Sparklines

• Cube Dynamic Rows

• Cube Metadata

• Cube Browser

• Australian Sparklines

• Angry Koala Cube Browser

• Bullet Charts

• Synchronizing Groups, Charts, and Sparklines

CREATING SPARKLINES

Edward Tufte, one of the most recognized experts on the subject of data visualization, presents the idea of sparklines. As Tufte describes it in his book Beautiful Evidence (Graphics Press, 2006), sparklines are "small, high-resolution graphics embedded in a context of words, numbers, and images." These are simple, word-sized graphics that are an alternative to large, busy charts used to communicate a simple trend or series of measurements. In order to be meaningful, sometimes charts need to have annotated gridlines, point labels, and legends. However, some charts can effectively serve their purpose without the use of supporting text labels. To illustrate observations like "sales are improving," "a product is profitable," or that a trend is cyclical, a simple trend chart needs little or no labeling. Sparklines are best used when embedded in text or other report formats.

Product Versions

• Reporting Services 2008

What You'll Need

• A query expression used to return trend data

• A small, simplified line or area chart item

• A table item to display master rows

Although the instructions in this recipe are targeting the 2008 version of Reporting Services, the concept of creating sparkline reports can be applied to earlier versions as well, by simply changing how we create tables, groups, ...