What's New in NetAdvantage for Silverlight Data Visualization 11.2 Release

mmateev — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 18:11:00 GMT

This blog is an overview of the new features, released in the Silverlight Data Visualization Vol. 11.2 product.

NetAdvantage for Silverlight Data Visualization Vol. 11.2 includes several new exciting components and many feature enhancements to existing controls. Some of the feature enhancements can be considered ‘new features’ because of the impact they will have on our customer base. In this wonderful product you will get multiple new chart series and chart types, OLAP capability is expanded to include native OLAP support in charting. There are more styling capabilities with the Resource Washing feature on all controls. In this release Infragistics has created a new Geographic Map with a great geospatial and geographic thematic mapping capability.
Most of XAML LoB components are cross-platform (supported in the both Silverlight and WPF products), but this post covers exactly new features for Silverlight.

The key new features are:

OLAP Axis (CTP)
Data Chart enhancements: error bars, 15 new chart series
Pivot Grid enhancements
Funnel Chart
Spark Charts (CTP)
Geographic Map (CTP)
Resource Washer
Math Library
Excel Library enhancements

Features in this Release

XamDataChart

New Chart Series

In the new 11.2 Release XamDataChart received an additional 15 new series:

Custom Series / Series Inheritance
Bar
Stacked100Bar
Stacked100Column
StackedBar
StackedColumn
Point
StackedArea
Stacked100Area
StackedLine
Stacked100Line
StackedSpline
Stacked100Spline
StackedSplineArea
Stacked100SplineArea

Some of there series was available like CTP in NetAdvantage for Silverlight Data Visualization Vol.11.1, others are completely new in the new 11.2 Release

Stacked Bar Series

Stacked 100 Column Series

Stacked Spline Area Series sample

Chart with Stacked Line Series

Olap Axis (CTP)

Olap Axis for XamDataChart proposes a graphical representation of the Olap data source.

When is used an OLAP data source this feature gives developers an opportunity to deliver a true end-user drill-down experience with large volumes of data in a highly visual way.

Olap Axis key features:

DataSource – the OLAP data source, which is shared with one or more xamPivotGrid and / or xamPivotGrid Slicers
OlapAxisSource – indicates where the data will for axis will be read from (rows or columns)
YAxis – the data chart Y axis that will be used for value data
AutoGenerateSeries – defines if OLAP axis will generate series or series will be read for Series property of DataChart
Drill-down support
Tooltips
Zooming and scrolling

Olap Axis bound to OLAP Flat Data

<ig:XamDataChart x:Name="DataChart" Legend="{Binding ElementName=Legend1}" 

                 Margin="0" Padding="0" Visibility="Visible" 

                 HorizontalZoomable="True" HorizontalZoombarVisibility="Visible" 

                 VerticalZoomable="False" VerticalZoombarVisibility="Collapsed">

    <ig:XamDataChart.Axes>

        <ig:OlapXAxis x:Name="olapXAxis" 

                      DataSource="{StaticResource OlapFlatDataSource}" 

                      OlapAxisSource="Columns" 

                      AutoGenerateSeries="True"

                      YAxis="{Binding ElementName=yAxis}">

        </ig:OlapXAxis>

        <ig:NumericYAxis x:Name="yAxis" MinimumValue="0" />

    </ig:XamDataChart.Axes>

</ig:XamDataChart>

Error Bars

Error Bars are used when you have a sample of data and you want to show mean , standard deviation, confidence intervals and possible error.

Error Bars are supported in the following Series types:

ColumnSeries
SplineSeries
LineSeries
AreaSeries
StepLineSeries
StepAreaSeries
SplineAreaSeries
All Scatter-Type Series

Funnel Chart (XamFunnelChart)

Another new component in the 11.2 release is a XamFunnelChart. This control represents a chart with a funnel shape. It displays sections in a top-down composition each representing the data as slices from largest value to the smallest value

Spark Charts (CTP)

In Silverlight Data Visualization 11.2 Release you could enjoy spark charts.

Spark charts are specific chart types that are typically used in dashboards or data grid cells so users can spot trends, variations and patterns in the data in clear and compact graphical representation.

Many different trendlines can be applied to help users analyze their data, including linear, weighted, quadratic, cubic, quadratic, quintic, logarithmic, exponential and more.

There are four types of Spark Charts in this release:

Sparkline Line Chart
Sparkline Bar Chart
Sparkline Area Chart
Sparkline Win/Loss Chart

Some of the general features of the Spark Charts are:

Markers - Show First / Last Marker, Negative Markers, High Markers, Low Markers
Trend Lines
Ranges
Tooltips

Geographic Map (CTP)

In the new Silverlight Data Visualization 11.2 Release you could have the advantage to use the brand new XamGeographicMap. This is a completely new high-performance component predicted to visualize a huge amount of spatial data. It is based on the fast XamDataChart engine and customers could use with this component the experience from data chart.

This approach adds some new innovative features to the map:

Render polylines / polyshapes (any standard ESRI SHP file)
Custom shape templates
Shape Fill, Shape Styles and Conditional Formatting of Shapes
Symbol Series with the ability to add a custom Symbol Template
Contour Area Series
Scatter Area Series
Multiple Series
Panning & Zooming

There are several key features in XamGeographicMap:

Map Progression - Display multiple shape series in the Geographic Map control to show progression of the values in the different places.
Series Drilldown - Load and display different shape files based on zoom distance in Geographic Map control.
Polyline Series – Display objects that could be visualized via polylines . The colors of objects could be styled using conditional style selector to show it in different way depending on specific value.
Overview Pane – Use the map overview pane to navigate the maps in an intuitive and easy to use display.

Geographic Map control can be used to show progression of sea surface temperatures in various parts of the world. Progression uses a set of shapefiles to show surfaces.

By default XamGeographicMap uses as a background tile source from OpenStreetMap (www.openstreetmap.org) .

It is possible to set a different tile source via XamGeographicMap.BackgroundContent property.

Spatial data is represented with a set of geographic series. For example GeographicShapeSeries is used to work with shapefiles.

<ig:ShapefileConverter x:Key="shapeFileSource" 

                       ImportCompleted="OnShapefileImportCompleted"

                       CollectionChanged="OnShapefileCollectionChanged"

                       ShapefileSource="/SamplesBrowser/SamplesCommon/Shapefiles/world/world_countries.shp" 

                       DatabaseSource="/SamplesBrowser/SamplesCommon/Shapefiles/world/world_countries.dbf" />

    <ig:GeographicShapeSeries ItemsSource="{StaticResource shapeFileSource}" 

                              ShapeStyleSelector="{StaticResource shapeStyleSelector}" 

                              ShapeMemberPath="Points" >

        <ig:GeographicShapeSeries.MarkerTemplate>

            <DataTemplate>

                <TextBlock Text="{Binding Item.Fields[CNTRY_NAME]}" Foreground="White"  />

            </DataTemplate>

        </ig:GeographicShapeSeries.MarkerTemplate>

        <ig:GeographicShapeSeries.ToolTip>

  

            <Border BorderBrush="{StaticResource TooltipStrokeBrush}" BorderThickness="1" Background="{StaticResource TooltipBgBrush}">

                <StackPanel Margin="4">

                    <StackPanel Orientation="Horizontal" HorizontalAlignment="Left">

                        <TextBlock Text="{Binding XWM_Country, Source={StaticResource ModelStrings}}" FontWeight="Bold" Margin="2" />

                        <TextBlock Text="{Binding Item.Fields[CNTRY_NAME]}" Foreground="{StaticResource ForegroundBrush}" Margin="4,2,2,2" />

                    </StackPanel>

                    <StackPanel Orientation="Horizontal" HorizontalAlignment="Left">

                        <TextBlock Text="{Binding XWM_Population, Source={StaticResource ModelStrings}}" FontWeight="Bold" Margin="2" />

                        <TextBlock Text="{Binding Item.Fields[POP_CNTRY], StringFormat='#,##0'}" Foreground="{StaticResource ForegroundBrush}" Margin="4,2,2,2" />

                    </StackPanel>

                </StackPanel>

            </Border>

        </ig:GeographicShapeSeries.ToolTip>

    </ig:GeographicShapeSeries>

For now XamGeographicMap supports the following types of data sources:

Shapefile (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shapefile, http://www.esri.com/library/whitepapers/pdfs/shapefile.pdf)
ITF [Intermediate TIN Format] (http://vterrain.org/Implementation/Formats/ITF.html )
View Model with appropriate data, containing items location.

You could to bind pre-triangulated files (.ITF) to the Geographic Map control to plot hundreds of thou

sands of points showing precipitation measurements from thousands of weather stations in the USA.

It is possible to bind a view model to the Geographic Map control to show locations and information about major cities in the world.

XamPivotGrid

There are important XamPivotGrid improvements that improve performance and usability in the new 11.2 Release

IsBusy property

This is a new property added (at the request of Services) which displays an indicator showing the grid is loading data or is performing an operation. This feature is consistent with Microsoft’s DomainDataSource IsBusy property.

Performance improvements

Several performance enhancements have been made which deliver support for higher volume data and query parsing:

Improved support for data with large number of members in hierarchy
Improve the MDX query that are execute against the SQL Server Analysis Server
Tested against millions of records in SQL Server Analysis Server

Slicers

Slicers are visual controls which allow user to filter information quickly in an interactive way. Slicers are a good choice for working with data because they eliminate the hunting and pecking operation of trying to find the right data you need to filter. In most cases, users are given a hierarchical tree view of an OLAP data source, and It is up to them to figure out what the data means and how it is shaped.

Data slicer is an additional filtering capability of the hierarchies selected in columns, rows and filtered areas.

Resource Washer

This component is a new for Silverlight DV and Silverlight LoB Vol.11.2 (ported from WPF)

With Resource Washing, you can set the color (the WashColor) on groups of resources (WashGroups) in an existing ResourceDictionary to update the color of the controls in your application. Using Resource Washing, you can take a basic looking application and re-brand it to your corporate colors, of you can set a WashColor at runtime to change the look of an application.

The main features are:

Set the color color (the WashColor) on groups of resources (WashGroups) in an existing ResourceDictionary to update the color of the controls in your application.
Wash Modes

Excel Library enhancements

The Excel Library now includes the following new features:

Shapes Support – Support for a few simple shape types including rectangles, right triangles, line shapes, and more. These can be created in code and saved to a workbook. In addition, shapes can now be flipped horizontally and vertically and you can change their outline and fill colors.
Data Validations – Constraints can now be placed on the values entered by users in Microsoft Excel. All data validations, including drop down lists and custom formula validations, are supported.
Print Titles – Groups of rows and columns can now be set to be repeated on each printed page when the users prints the worksheet in Microsoft Excel.
Print Area – Rectangular ranges of cells can now be set to be printed on their own pages when the user prints the worksheet in Microsoft Excel.
Page Breaks – Horizontal and vertical page break can now be added to the worksheets. This will allow you to force content to move to the next page when the user prints the worksheet in Microsoft Excel

The exciting new NetAdvantage for Silverlight Data Visualization Vol.11.2 offers also enhancements for other controls like XamTimeLine and XamNetworkNode. You can try it a few days. Follow news from Infragistics in http://infragistics.com/ and twitter: @infragistics for more information about new Infragistics products.

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What's New in NetAdvantage for Silverlight Data Visualization 11.2 Release