Chapter 12. Adding Charts and Graphs to Your Applications
Writing business applications will (or maybe that should be should), at some point, involve the presentation of data. The data being displayed may be shown in tabular form (such as in the earlier chapters of this book), but oftentimes it's better to show it in some visual illustrative form, following the adage that a picture is worth a thousand words.
One of the simplest ways of showing a picture of your data is to use a graph or chart. Your end users will be able to see at a glance the outliers of your data or any trends that the raw data may be hiding, get an appreciation for the rate of change of the values of the data over time, and perhaps even analyze different views of the data to understand what is important and what is not. These immediate visual insights are more difficult to attain if the data is presented in a list or grid.
DevExpress's charting facilities are provided in the XtraCharts product. Unlike many other products, XtraCharts provides support for both ASP.NET and Windows Forms applications, although this chapter primarily discusses the Web side of the product.
XtraCharts provides the usual gamut of chart types, from the standard two-dimensional ones to the more visually appealing three-dimensional charts. Examples of the types of charts that are available include bar charts, line charts, area views, radar/polar views, pies and doughnuts, and financial type charts.
The Vernacular
Before starting on how to use ...
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