Dundas CHART for Reporting Services

I'm curious to know others opinion of the Dundas Charting for Reporting
Services. I have downloaded and installed the beta and it appears to be
nice. Although I haven't had a chance to get any real reports created with
it. I like the fact that I can change the chart type while viewing the
report. Well, at least I can with VS.NET 2003.
I'm wondering if it is published to a server is the users can also change
the report type.Hi dm4714,
well, I am wanting to try it out too...I'll let you know what I
think....the beta has only been available for a week or so ... it's
pretty early...
We are looking to use RS + DotNetNuke + Dundas for RS....we felt the
charts inside 'vanilla RS' were a bit 'vanilla' and we wanted to
improve our charting with Dundas....
Best Regards
Peter Nolan
www.peternolan.com|||Hi dm4714,
well, I have my new instance of XP Pro and CTP version of SQL Server
2005 Dundas Chart Beta and I even bought a book on new 2005
features...learning as fast as I can...(LOL).
Without being an 'advertisement' I can say on first look Dundas Chart
for Report Services 2005 looks really good. I have had a small play
with it and am in the process of reading the manuals and understanding
how it actually works. In 2005 the Dundas Chart is a control that can
be placed into a form and you have complete control over the chart via
VB.net and C sharp. So, if you can code it, you can make the chart do
it...it seems.....I don't know the limitations as I have not got
there yet!!
The chart is placed onto the form and connected to dataset in similar
fashion to the MSFT chart that comes with RS2005. However, the range
of charts and the range of options is very large.....there also seems
to be some way to write pre/post rendering code in .net languages
though I am yet to figure that out....the samples allow you to control
such things as the type of chart produced based on another control so
the user can change the chart type on the fly.....
The documentation promises that the chart is drillable but I have not
yet tried (or even understood how to try) that feature...I asked
Dundas if they would publish an example of a drillable chart in dundas
in 2005 as I am keen to see how to do that.....we want the charts we
produce to be drillable...
It was not obvious at the start, but Dundas Chart for RS 2005 is a
completely separate product to Dundas Chart.
So, my feedback having read the manual for about 6 hours and gone
through all the samples is that it looks pretty good. Certainly I feel
we made a reasonable decision to wait for 2005 than try to get earlier
versions of any charts to work inside RS 2000.
I'll post again here when we have actually written some code and learn
some more......might be a few weeks...
I too would be very interested to hear anyone elses comments... :-)
Peter Nolan
www.peternolan.com|||I have spent about 2-3 weeks prototyping many different types of charts using
Dundas's SRS control and overall I am very impressed with it. I am using the
June CTP of SRS 2005. Here is my two cents worth of what I have found...
One big item that is missing is the ability to have a tooltip/hover message
on each data marker in a chart. Even though Dundas's base charts have this
functionality, Microsoft only allows ONE tooltip per control in SRS 2005. MS
says that this functionality is being limited due to security reasons and
Dundas had to disable this feature.
I would be interested where you got a book on SRS 2005 as I understand that
they have been releases to the market as of yet. Andrew Bryan at Dundas,
really great guy, is writing a book on how to create a custom control that
can be consumed in SRS2005. There is not any documentation at all on this as
of yet.
The programmability of Dundas's charts is really cool. With just a little
C# code I was able to inject my own image at each data marker on a chart. I
am currently working on trying to produce my own custom legend due to our
business requirements.
I would recommend that anyone using this control investigate the Advanced
tab. All of the really powerful stuff is in there. I do have some issues
with getting every x-axis data label to display, but this may be my problem.
I can only get them to display if I use both the primary and secondary x-axis
labels.
Performance is good and the 3D effects are done very well. My biggest
complaint is the lack of documentation and examples. Being a developer, I
like to have the nitty gritty details and all of this beta software sometimes
drives me nuts trying to get it to do what I want.
=====================Thanks!
Keith
p.s. Get off the couch and exercise!
"Peter Nolan" wrote:
> Hi dm4714,
> well, I have my new instance of XP Pro and CTP version of SQL Server
> 2005 Dundas Chart Beta and I even bought a book on new 2005
> features...learning as fast as I can...(LOL).
> Without being an 'advertisement' I can say on first look Dundas Chart
> for Report Services 2005 looks really good. I have had a small play
> with it and am in the process of reading the manuals and understanding
> how it actually works. In 2005 the Dundas Chart is a control that can
> be placed into a form and you have complete control over the chart via
> VB.net and C sharp. So, if you can code it, you can make the chart do
> it...it seems.....I don't know the limitations as I have not got
> there yet!!
> The chart is placed onto the form and connected to dataset in similar
> fashion to the MSFT chart that comes with RS2005. However, the range
> of charts and the range of options is very large.....there also seems
> to be some way to write pre/post rendering code in .net languages
> though I am yet to figure that out....the samples allow you to control
> such things as the type of chart produced based on another control so
> the user can change the chart type on the fly.....
> The documentation promises that the chart is drillable but I have not
> yet tried (or even understood how to try) that feature...I asked
> Dundas if they would publish an example of a drillable chart in dundas
> in 2005 as I am keen to see how to do that.....we want the charts we
> produce to be drillable...
> It was not obvious at the start, but Dundas Chart for RS 2005 is a
> completely separate product to Dundas Chart.
> So, my feedback having read the manual for about 6 hours and gone
> through all the samples is that it looks pretty good. Certainly I feel
> we made a reasonable decision to wait for 2005 than try to get earlier
> versions of any charts to work inside RS 2000.
> I'll post again here when we have actually written some code and learn
> some more......might be a few weeks...
> I too would be very interested to hear anyone elses comments... :-)
> Peter Nolan
> www.peternolan.com
>|||IN SRS 2005 is there any option for multiple X-Axis
"Keith" wrote:
> I have spent about 2-3 weeks prototyping many different types of charts using
> Dundas's SRS control and overall I am very impressed with it. I am using the
> June CTP of SRS 2005. Here is my two cents worth of what I have found...
> One big item that is missing is the ability to have a tooltip/hover message
> on each data marker in a chart. Even though Dundas's base charts have this
> functionality, Microsoft only allows ONE tooltip per control in SRS 2005. MS
> says that this functionality is being limited due to security reasons and
> Dundas had to disable this feature.
> I would be interested where you got a book on SRS 2005 as I understand that
> they have been releases to the market as of yet. Andrew Bryan at Dundas,
> really great guy, is writing a book on how to create a custom control that
> can be consumed in SRS2005. There is not any documentation at all on this as
> of yet.
> The programmability of Dundas's charts is really cool. With just a little
> C# code I was able to inject my own image at each data marker on a chart. I
> am currently working on trying to produce my own custom legend due to our
> business requirements.
> I would recommend that anyone using this control investigate the Advanced
> tab. All of the really powerful stuff is in there. I do have some issues
> with getting every x-axis data label to display, but this may be my problem.
> I can only get them to display if I use both the primary and secondary x-axis
> labels.
> Performance is good and the 3D effects are done very well. My biggest
> complaint is the lack of documentation and examples. Being a developer, I
> like to have the nitty gritty details and all of this beta software sometimes
> drives me nuts trying to get it to do what I want.
> =====================> Thanks!
> Keith
> p.s. Get off the couch and exercise!
>
> "Peter Nolan" wrote:
> > Hi dm4714,
> > well, I have my new instance of XP Pro and CTP version of SQL Server
> > 2005 Dundas Chart Beta and I even bought a book on new 2005
> > features...learning as fast as I can...(LOL).
> >
> > Without being an 'advertisement' I can say on first look Dundas Chart
> > for Report Services 2005 looks really good. I have had a small play
> > with it and am in the process of reading the manuals and understanding
> > how it actually works. In 2005 the Dundas Chart is a control that can
> > be placed into a form and you have complete control over the chart via
> > VB.net and C sharp. So, if you can code it, you can make the chart do
> > it...it seems.....I don't know the limitations as I have not got
> > there yet!!
> >
> > The chart is placed onto the form and connected to dataset in similar
> > fashion to the MSFT chart that comes with RS2005. However, the range
> > of charts and the range of options is very large.....there also seems
> > to be some way to write pre/post rendering code in .net languages
> > though I am yet to figure that out....the samples allow you to control
> > such things as the type of chart produced based on another control so
> > the user can change the chart type on the fly.....
> >
> > The documentation promises that the chart is drillable but I have not
> > yet tried (or even understood how to try) that feature...I asked
> > Dundas if they would publish an example of a drillable chart in dundas
> > in 2005 as I am keen to see how to do that.....we want the charts we
> > produce to be drillable...
> >
> > It was not obvious at the start, but Dundas Chart for RS 2005 is a
> > completely separate product to Dundas Chart.
> >
> > So, my feedback having read the manual for about 6 hours and gone
> > through all the samples is that it looks pretty good. Certainly I feel
> > we made a reasonable decision to wait for 2005 than try to get earlier
> > versions of any charts to work inside RS 2000.
> >
> > I'll post again here when we have actually written some code and learn
> > some more......might be a few weeks...
> >
> > I too would be very interested to hear anyone elses comments... :-)
> >
> > Peter Nolan
> > www.peternolan.com
> >
> >|||Dundas is very nice.
Here is a tool (free) which make charts similar to Dundas and can be
plugged
easily to sqlserver (being .NET):
http://151.100.3.84/technicalpreview/
-Pamela
.NET Developer|||Hi Keith,
the book I bought is called 'SQL Server 2005 New Features' by Michael
Otley. Senior Technical Editor SQL Server Magazine. It only has a
small section on SRS but it does cover lots and lots of the new stuff
in 2005 and there is quite a bit...after all it has been 5 years!!!
(LOL)..It's about 250 pages...I bought it because it would save me
hours and hours of flicking through other manuals and presentations
just to get the highlights of the new features...I think it's worth
getting....(I buy a lot of books.)
It seems like partitioning has been done properly in 2005...and I am
very interested/impressed with the idea that something that looks like
a stored procedure can actually be a .net programming language....I
can think of plenty of uses of such a feature.....I am trying to
figure out if I can turn 10,000 lines of SPs that I have written into
something that cannot be read, like a program...but heck, I only got
the book on the weekend....more reading to do yet...
Best Regards
Peter Nolan.|||Peter,
Thanks for the kind words and plug for my book! ... I guess I really
have to get to work on it now eh? It is expected to be released in
March.
With respect to the docs and samples, this is an area that I will be
focusing in the next couple of weeks. The docs will be a continual
work in progress but we we be getting more technical writing done soon.
For the samples, this is where you can help. If there is a particular
sample that you would like to see, let us know. We would like to get
this product's sample set as complete as our .net offerings but it will
take some time.
There will be a new beta released in Sept for the release candidate of
SQL Server 2005 so what for it ... there will be more samples in that
build.
Thanks again,
Andrew Bryan
Keith wrote:
> I have spent about 2-3 weeks prototyping many different types of charts using
> Dundas's SRS control and overall I am very impressed with it. I am using the
> June CTP of SRS 2005. Here is my two cents worth of what I have found...
> One big item that is missing is the ability to have a tooltip/hover message
> on each data marker in a chart. Even though Dundas's base charts have this
> functionality, Microsoft only allows ONE tooltip per control in SRS 2005. MS
> says that this functionality is being limited due to security reasons and
> Dundas had to disable this feature.
> I would be interested where you got a book on SRS 2005 as I understand that
> they have been releases to the market as of yet. Andrew Bryan at Dundas,
> really great guy, is writing a book on how to create a custom control that
> can be consumed in SRS2005. There is not any documentation at all on this as
> of yet.
> The programmability of Dundas's charts is really cool. With just a little
> C# code I was able to inject my own image at each data marker on a chart. I
> am currently working on trying to produce my own custom legend due to our
> business requirements.
> I would recommend that anyone using this control investigate the Advanced
> tab. All of the really powerful stuff is in there. I do have some issues
> with getting every x-axis data label to display, but this may be my problem.
> I can only get them to display if I use both the primary and secondary x-axis
> labels.
> Performance is good and the 3D effects are done very well. My biggest
> complaint is the lack of documentation and examples. Being a developer, I
> like to have the nitty gritty details and all of this beta software sometimes
> drives me nuts trying to get it to do what I want.
> =====================> Thanks!
> Keith
> p.s. Get off the couch and exercise!
>
> "Peter Nolan" wrote:
> > Hi dm4714,
> > well, I have my new instance of XP Pro and CTP version of SQL Server
> > 2005 Dundas Chart Beta and I even bought a book on new 2005
> > features...learning as fast as I can...(LOL).
> >
> > Without being an 'advertisement' I can say on first look Dundas Chart
> > for Report Services 2005 looks really good. I have had a small play
> > with it and am in the process of reading the manuals and understanding
> > how it actually works. In 2005 the Dundas Chart is a control that can
> > be placed into a form and you have complete control over the chart via
> > VB.net and C sharp. So, if you can code it, you can make the chart do
> > it...it seems.....I don't know the limitations as I have not got
> > there yet!!
> >
> > The chart is placed onto the form and connected to dataset in similar
> > fashion to the MSFT chart that comes with RS2005. However, the range
> > of charts and the range of options is very large.....there also seems
> > to be some way to write pre/post rendering code in .net languages
> > though I am yet to figure that out....the samples allow you to control
> > such things as the type of chart produced based on another control so
> > the user can change the chart type on the fly.....
> >
> > The documentation promises that the chart is drillable but I have not
> > yet tried (or even understood how to try) that feature...I asked
> > Dundas if they would publish an example of a drillable chart in dundas
> > in 2005 as I am keen to see how to do that.....we want the charts we
> > produce to be drillable...
> >
> > It was not obvious at the start, but Dundas Chart for RS 2005 is a
> > completely separate product to Dundas Chart.
> >
> > So, my feedback having read the manual for about 6 hours and gone
> > through all the samples is that it looks pretty good. Certainly I feel
> > we made a reasonable decision to wait for 2005 than try to get earlier
> > versions of any charts to work inside RS 2000.
> >
> > I'll post again here when we have actually written some code and learn
> > some more......might be a few weeks...
> >
> > I too would be very interested to hear anyone elses comments... :-)
> >
> > Peter Nolan
> > www.peternolan.com
> >
> >|||I have not used the chart package for 2005 but the previous charts were
drillable ... I would like to think that they didnt *remove* functionality
...
Right click on your chart and choose Properties. Choose the data tab ...
select one of your values and then EDIT. You will notice a series of tabs
that display ... choose the one that says ACTION and you will see "jump to
report" which is the drill - thru. Thats where it is on the OLD way ... I
hope you can find it somewhere in the vicinity on the package you are working
with. Let me know ... ok? Thanks!
"Peter Nolan" wrote:
> Hi dm4714,
> well, I have my new instance of XP Pro and CTP version of SQL Server
> 2005 Dundas Chart Beta and I even bought a book on new 2005
> features...learning as fast as I can...(LOL).
> Without being an 'advertisement' I can say on first look Dundas Chart
> for Report Services 2005 looks really good. I have had a small play
> with it and am in the process of reading the manuals and understanding
> how it actually works. In 2005 the Dundas Chart is a control that can
> be placed into a form and you have complete control over the chart via
> VB.net and C sharp. So, if you can code it, you can make the chart do
> it...it seems.....I don't know the limitations as I have not got
> there yet!!
> The chart is placed onto the form and connected to dataset in similar
> fashion to the MSFT chart that comes with RS2005. However, the range
> of charts and the range of options is very large.....there also seems
> to be some way to write pre/post rendering code in .net languages
> though I am yet to figure that out....the samples allow you to control
> such things as the type of chart produced based on another control so
> the user can change the chart type on the fly.....
> The documentation promises that the chart is drillable but I have not
> yet tried (or even understood how to try) that feature...I asked
> Dundas if they would publish an example of a drillable chart in dundas
> in 2005 as I am keen to see how to do that.....we want the charts we
> produce to be drillable...
> It was not obvious at the start, but Dundas Chart for RS 2005 is a
> completely separate product to Dundas Chart.
> So, my feedback having read the manual for about 6 hours and gone
> through all the samples is that it looks pretty good. Certainly I feel
> we made a reasonable decision to wait for 2005 than try to get earlier
> versions of any charts to work inside RS 2000.
> I'll post again here when we have actually written some code and learn
> some more......might be a few weeks...
> I too would be very interested to hear anyone elses comments... :-)
> Peter Nolan
> www.peternolan.com
>|||Hi MJ,
it is there, the manual talks about how to do it, but it needs to be
written into the controls as .net it looks like....my problem is that
my skill level is not up to it yet!!! ;-)..I think I am just not
'there' yet.
I am not after the jump/hypelink style of drill thru, I am looking for
subsetting the data from the existing dataset.....like I said, it is
just hard for me to follow..
I have had feedback from Dundas that they will prepare an example as
part of the beta...in fact they are being great they really seem to
want to hear what people want in the product!! What a nice change for a
software vendor!!!
Peter
www.peternolan.com