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Chart component in financial apps - feature questions

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Andrew Thompson
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Andrew Thompson asked on 17 Jan 2010, 11:11 PM
Hi all,

I am interested in buying the SL/WPF RAD controls (just downloaded the trial), however have a question about the chart component. 

I am part of a team developing a financial application and I'm looking for a chart component that can do the following: 

  • Candlestick, Bar (Open, High, Low, Close), Line, Mountain (Area) and Column chart types
  • Ability to mix chart types on one pane, for instance, Candlestick overlaid with line graphs
  • Ability to zoom/pan quickly via the mouse
  • High performance - nothing spectacular but ability to display plots with tens of thousands of datapoints and zoom/pan at interactive framerates
  • Abililty to databind to collections / datasets etc
  • Ability to draw over the chart both programatically and via user click. For instance
    • Trendlines/channels, fibonnacci retracements, text, custom markets such as buy/sell arrows
    • Any user drawn trendlines as the chart moves/zooms around must move with the chart
  • Ideally generate point and figure charts. 

Now I realise the telerik chart will not do all this, but in the case of OHLC (Open High Low Close) charts, point and figure or drawing trendlines, does anyone know if it is possible to write our own code to display these series types and constructs on the chart? 

Has anyone used the telerik chart in such an application and could provide feedback on them for this use?

I am also interested in the docking manager, ribbon bar and other controls that RAD provide, but for the chart to meet our needs would also be a nice bonus. 

Thanks for your time,
Cheers,
Andrew

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Vladimir Milev
Telerik team
answered on 21 Jan 2010, 08:24 AM
Hello Andrew Thompson,

Thanks for your interest in RadChart. I would like to share some news that you may find interesting. The data visualization team is currently working on performance and data analysis features for Q1 2010. We currently have an internal version of RadChart running against 100,000 data items with a decent performance. Also we will allow you to zoom and pan using the mouse starting Q1.

If you feel like earning some points feel free to submit a feature request with additional information about what kinds of trend lines you would like to see included, how they are used and why they will be useful to you.

Regards,
Vladimir Milev
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Andrew Thompson
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answered on 21 Jan 2010, 10:11 AM
Hi there, and thank you for your reply,

If Telerik is interested in making their chart component useful to the financial community then that would indeed be useful. (and I can say there are few chart components that can do proper financial charts)

The only chart component that does pretty much all we require (and I know this one is heavily used in finance) is this:

These are the key feature most charts do not support for financial apps. 

  • Support for built in Line Studies like Ellipse, Rectangle, Trend Line, Speed Lines, Gann Fan, Fibonacci Arcs, Fibonacci Fan, Fibonacci Retracements, Fibonacci Time Zones, Tirone Levels, Quadrant Lines, Raff Regression, and Error Channels.
  • Trend Line Penetration events notify your application whenever a series crosses above or below a trend line. Trend lines can automatically extend into the future.
  • Supports trend line drawing, objects (buy/sell arrows, text, etc.) and more.

Now with regard to a feature request, I'd love to submit one, however I cannot seem to be able to do it. When I clicked "Submit" on RadControls for WPF (or silverlight) I could not affect the dropdown box saying what the issue was for. I could only report feedback on the PITS system. 

Any suggestions?
Regards, 
Andrew
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Vladimir Milev
Telerik team
answered on 26 Jan 2010, 04:09 PM
Hi Andrew Thompson,

Thanks for taking the time to write to us and providing such nice and thoughtful feedback. Your points have been updated.

Once again, your feedback is sincerely appreciated.

All the best,
Vladimir Milev
the Telerik team

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Andrew Thompson
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answered on 04 Feb 2010, 07:41 AM
Hi there, a little more thought about this - I was discussing this issue on the amCharts forum here:

They suggested a canvas could be placed over the chart and drawable items pinned to prices/dates (start and end position). 

This would allow drawing almost anything as if you think about it all the items a user would wish to annotate on a chart have 1 (or 2) anchor points to the underlying data series. 

For instance, trendlines (2 anchor points), text (1), fibonnacci retracements (can be re-created with 2 anchors. bottom left and top right), gann angles (again 2 anchors) etc etc

So perhaps if Telerik were to implement this as a feature, it could be done with a drawing canvas that allowed some base type objects to be placed on and bound to underlying x/y (ie: price and datetime) of the underlying timeseries. Then developers would override the base object type and draw what they like in there. If the "base annotation object" was serializable, developers could persist the state of the chart with annotations to backing store. 

Now ok Im sure you are busy chaps, but would a feature like this be on your roadmap (ever) for Telerik RadChart (for use in financial applications) ?

Either that, or do you think I could implement such a thing myself to integrate to RadChart? (e.g. does RadControls come with source code)

Thanks for your time,
Andrew

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Andrew Thompson
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answered on 04 Feb 2010, 07:54 AM
.... For example

If you take a look at http://www.freestockcharts.com/ and try some of the drawing options on the left of the chart you'll see what I mean. For instance, Fib Retracement you click and drag - you'll see the two anchor points there. If the underlying framework could support binding a base object via one/two anchors to the underlying price / time series then the user could override this base object and draw whatever they liked there. Pretty much anyway. Since there are virtually no WPF/Silverlight chart components that fully provide what a financial app needs, if telerik were to achieve this they'd have one of the only components in the market to do so ... 

What do you think about this?
Cheers!
Andrew
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Vladimir Milev
Telerik team
answered on 10 Feb 2010, 07:48 AM
Hello Andrew Thompson,

These are indeed some impressive features listed here. Although we always strive to fulfill customer requests it would take substantial time and resources to implement most of the suggested functionality. RadChart is aimed to be a well-rounded generic charting product that suits most developers. This does not mean that we will not consider what is mentioned in this thread. It means that these features will probably make it in the product one by one over a longer period of time.

It will be helpful for telerik if the community can vote up some specific features in our PITS so we can prioritize which functionality should be implemented first.

All the best,
Vladimir Milev
the Telerik team

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JP
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answered on 03 May 2010, 08:59 PM
Does RadChart now have the feature to support 100k datapoints quickly?

Thanks,

JP
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Vladimir Milev
Telerik team
answered on 04 May 2010, 08:05 AM
Hello JP,

Yes sir, it does! Check this example out. The same thing is also available in WPF as well.

Greetings,
Vladimir Milev
the Telerik team

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