Chart FX for .NET - 30 Oct 2009

asp:review

Chart FXfor .NET

By David Mack

When youshare information you want to make it easy to understand the data. Sometimesthe best way to do that is with a chart or a map. Chart FX for .NET providesexactly that functionality in a tool that s automatically integrated intoVisual Studio.NET. It provides charts that can be used in WinForms or WebForms.It provides all the standard charts you would expect to better share yourinformation: line, pie, bubble, and gantt plus some you might not have imagined.

Theinstallation is painless and easy to follow. Chart FX will appear in yourVisual Studio Toolbox. Simply start by dragging the Chart FX control onto yourWinForm or WebForm. The wizard (see Figure 1) automatically pops up and walksyou through the type of chart you want to use. You can control the borderstyle, color palette, axis labels, and chart titles. It s easy to make changesif you don t like how the chart looks once you run it against the actual data.You can access the properties of the control or you can run the wizard again byright-clicking on the control.

Figure 1: The Chart FX for .NET Wizard.

The dataused to populate the charts can be pulled from an ADO dataset, XML file, array,collection, or even a flat text file. You can let Chart FX do the work andpopulate the chart based on your ADO dataset. Simply pass the datasetto Chart FX, set a property for the chart to get its information from thedataset, and you re done. If you want more granularity over what goes into thechart, you can use the API and event handlers to control the data.

Theserver-side component allows you to control how the chart looks before it sactually displayed in the browser. If the browser in use doesn t support .NETformats then it can generate a .jpeg to display the information. If your targetbrowser is Internet Explorer you can take advantage of the client-sidecomponents. That means you can actually let users interact with the charts. Theinstallation of the client-side component is transparent to the user. Chart FXsupports browser detection so you can tailor your content to take advantage ofbrowser features when they are available.

I wouldlike to point out the help that s available for this product. The Web site doesa good job of getting information to the user. There is a huge amount ofinformation in the online forums, and it seems to be well monitored by theSoftware FX developers and tech support. I especially liked the documentationthat shipped with the product. It s organized in such a way that you canquickly jump to a specific area. Searching within the help is also easy to do.The example source code is easy to follow and adapt for your own purposes. Inaddition, there are slideshows that walk you through the various chartssupported. All that said, the learning curve is relatively short despite allthe flexibility and power the tool provides.

If youare looking for a simple, easy to use tool for charting and graphing, you can tdo much better than Chart FX for .NET.

DavidMack is a technicallead for the National Intelligence Division of Titan Systems and an independentconsultant. He has more than 10 years of experience in object-orientedprogramming. Reach him at mailto:[email protected].

Rating:

WebSite: http://www.softwarefx.com

Price: US$2,699