Basics to build Charts

[Irmgard]

Hello Telerik,
I am working with Telerik Reporting Q1 2013 in VS 2012.
The last year I successfully build a lot of reports (free format , tables, crosstables, etc.) but now I am very disappointed and desperate in creating reports with some nice charts. The requirement is to build a chart like figure 1 (see attachment). I was not lucky either using Charts nor Graphs.
I followed the instructions of the tutorial "Product Line Sales Video" which really is not very helpful, because it takes a lot of time in styling any report headers and fading out when details of the charts are to be set.
Here some detail questions:
1. What is better to use Charts or Graphs?
2. Why do I get this error in the Chart: the type of column with Name ANZ_MONTAGEN is not numeric (this field is numeric!)
3. in the Chart: how can I show the countries in the legend instead of "Series 1" ?
4. how can the legend be sorted by top 10 amount desc?
5. how can the pie label be shown in percentage?
6. how can I show the top 10 amount and additionally other amounts (the rest)?
7. is it possible to build charts or graphs in 3D?

It would be great to get some help.
Thanks
Irmgard

[Stef]

Hello Irmgard,

The old Chart item(pie chart) can show label connectors by setting the series StyleSeries.ShowLabelConnectors Property. The new Graph item does not support this feature currently, so we are working on improving the labels placement for future releases.

On your other questions:

1. Our recommendation is to start using the new Graph item as the old Chart item is obsolete. Notice the Graph item is constantly improved and new features are added.
2. If the fields used as DataXColumn and DataYColumn for the Chart.Series are numerical the exception would not occur.
3. What the Chart item's legend will display can be controlled by the series Appearance.LegendDisplayMode property. Other approach is to manually add items to the Chart.Legend.Items collection. Then sorting will depends on your custom logic to add the items. Notice the Graph item provides greater expression support to filter displayed data.
4. The following help article illustrates a programmatic creation of Chart item and adjusting of labels: How to: Programmatically Data Binding Chart to a Generic List of Objects. Other formatting options are listed in the DefaultLabelValue help article.
5. Currently there are no 3D charts in Telerik Reporting. Depending on the used technology for your application you may check our different controls suites as these for Silverlight.

I hope this points you into the right direction.

Regards,
Stef
Telerik

[Irmgard]

Hi stef,

thank you very much for replying. Some problems are solved others still stay: the exception error in Charts.Series.
I have defined a very simple datasource of sales to show in a chart:
select jahr as year, sum(menge) as amount
from   v104_mont_jahr_monat_kw_land
where  jahr >= 2010
and    land = 'DE'
group by jahr
where year and amount are numeric fields in database. In the Chart.series I defined DataXColumn as year and DataYColumn as amount (see fig1.png). starting the preview the error is thrown: "The type of column with name amount is not numeric". I also tried Fields.year and fields.amount with the same result. I do not understand why this error occurs! What is my mistake?
Can you help?
Thanks a lot.
Irmgard

[Stef]

Hi Irmgard,

The Chart item has a Skin property as it is working more like a control than item as it is. The new Graph item uses the styling options all native reporting items have and so does not expose a Skin property.

About the received exception, if the columns are defined as numeric it is not reproducible. you can find attached a sample report definition illustrating our test. It is created with Telerik Reporting Q2 2013 SP1 version.

If you need further help, provide us with the exact settings of your Chart item or open a support ticket and send us an example.

Regards,
Stef
Telerik