Introduction
With the recent launch of their all-new NetAdvantage® for WPF Data Visualization toolset, Infragistics provides expressive XAML data visualization controls for that high-end Business Intelligence solution you are building in Microsoft® Visual Studio® 2010 or Expression Blend® 4. In this article, we walk through the many samples showcasing inspiring data visualizations from pivot grids to data charts, that you can easily add to make your next BI application shine.
OLAP Pivot Tables
When you need pivoting to analyze data coming from your OLAP cube or data warehouse, traditional data tables simply will not do. Traditional data tables are flat, whereas pivot tables are multi-dimensional. Pivot tables allow you to represent data not just in the everyday 3-dimensional sense, but in a mathematically n-dimensional sense.
Figure 1 – Infragistics Pivot Grid control enables users to slice and dice multidimensional data from OLAP cubes interactively, and with rich styling and formatting.
With the powerful WPF pivot grid control shown operating on AdventureWorks data here, you can convert deep, ADO MD (SQL Server® 2008 Analysis Services), or XMLA data sources into compact reports capable of summarizing information along multiple lines of questioning. Users can interactively drag-and-drop fields into any of 4 areas to cross-tabulate key business data and see it in a whole new fashion:
- Filter fields are dimensions on which the user can select what values they want displayed. Filter fields can reduce or expand how much information shows. Only data items related to these filtered values are shown.
- Data items are summarizable facts bound to your flat Collection objects, hierarchical Collections, OLAP cubes, and databases. An example is “Amount of Sale”.
- Column fields are dimensions on which the data items are summarized going horizontally across the pivot grid. An example would be “Product”, in which data items can be sliced into values per type of product (clothing, bikes, etc.)
- Row fields are dimensions on which the data items are summarized going vertically down the pivot grid. An example would be “Seller”, in which data items can be sliced into values based on how well various salespeople have performed per product type.
Give your users greater flexibility to slice and dice multidimensional data on their own for a more compelling Business Intelligence solution built on WPF data visualization controls. Download your 30-day free trial today.
Seating Charts
Of all the kinds of charts to lead off with (pie, scatter, bubble, line, area, stacked, candlestick – all supported by the way), you might at first be dismissive of the humble seating chart. That all changes when you think about the amount in sales transacted everyday around the world for passenger flights, table service restaurants, sporting events, and concerts. Infragistics provides a geo-spatial map control with support for custom shapes and colors that allow you to create interactive airline seating chart applications that give travelers more information about their aircraft, seats, and amenities.
Figure 2 – Infragistics Geo-Spatial Map control, with its support for custom shapes and colors, enables you to create highly interactive seating charts.
Rather than writing your own seating chart user interface, you can concentrate on delivering these additional values to your customers (all also accomplished using Infragistics controls):
- Passengers can see where seats are located in the plane, such as proximity to exists, lavatories, galleys, aisles, and windows.
- To give passengers a sense of other travelers’ past experiences with the airline, a graph of customer satisfaction ratings is shown.
- Passengers see seat ratings from past travelers, helping them to make a decision based on whether the seat is good or has some drawbacks.
- Seating chart displays which seats are occupied and which are available. Once a passenger decides on a seat, they can click on the shape to select it.
- Information about the aircraft such as its total number of seats in each class, the width and pitch of the seats, and the flight amenities, are made available in one place.
You can set yourself apart from the competition with a compelling, high-end data visualization like those made possible by Infragistics data visualization controls. Download your own free trial of the WPF data visualization tools today.
Floor Plans
Seating charts aren’t the only important geospatial application of Infragistics map controls for WPF, and an equally large class of applications involve floor plans. From patient, bed, and equipment tracking in hospitals to inventory location on warehouse floors, and optimizing manufacturing processes in large factories, floor plans have uses across industries to promote efficiency and monitoring of resources.
Figure 3 – Infragistics Geo-Spatial Map control presents the beds in this hospital as a comprehensively informative floorplan view that can be drilled down into for further details.
Visually depicting one floor of a hospital, the floor plan provides hospital administrators relevant information about patients and staff in one glance. You get at the business intelligence right away:
- Information covering the floor as a whole – total number of beds, number of beds available, physician(s) on call, and the current head nurse.
- Easily identify the status of any bed on the floor through its shape, color, and border – free, assigned, occupied, awaiting discharge, male and female.
- Aggregate data about the patients, such as the number of males and females assigned to the floor.
- Rapidly locate crucial medical equipment like vital signs monitors or portable X-ray machines on the floor.
- Drilldown into an individual patient’s details including age, pulse, blood pressure, temperature, blood type, etc., without having to physically visit the patient’s bedside.
Make applications that empower their users to make more efficient use of their property with Infragistics data visualization controls. Download your own free trial of the WPF data visualization tools today.
Sales Dashboards
Dashboards provide high-level, aggregate information as well as the ability to drill down into specifics. You often need to design your dashboard to have the flexibility to make it useful for managers in corporate offices, regional centers, and across the field. Your dashboard also needs to maintain its relevancy across many different job functions like advertising, marketing, product management, operations, and of course, sales. Here is an Automotive Industry Sales Dashboard built around the Infragistics geographic map control, that also makes use of several line charts and bullet graphs to provide at-a-glance business intelligence on sales by region, model, dealership, and product line.
Figure 4 – Infragistics Geographic Map control forms the centerpiece of this dynamic Auto Sales Dashboard that lets you produce high-end business intelligence solutions that shine.
With the ensemble of WPF data visualization controls shown here, you can quickly produce high-end business intelligence dashboards with these features:
- Assess overall business health and performance.
- See changes in sales (regional, dealership, or by model) over different time intervals: weekly, monthly, quarterly, year to date (YTD), and trailing twelve months (TTM).
- Toggle between revenue and volume of sales in units, depending on the business question at hand.
- Monitor progress towards set sales objectives using the bullet graphs.
- Evaluate the performance of your individual salespeople.
If these are the kinds of high-end business intelligence solutions you’re looking to build, then download your own free trial of the WPF data visualization tools from Infragistics now.
Timelines
Many times you don’t just need to know where an event happened, but when in time. From chronological transaction histories, sequences of deposits and withdrawals from your bank account, all the way to the recording of events, timelines have their everyday uses in software. Infragistics integrates their geographic map control with their timeline control to plot the time, location, and magnitude of seismic activity (i.e., earthquakes).
Figure 5 – Infragistics Timeline control displays chronological events just as well as the Map control presents geographic information, letting your software make its point to users in less time.
Seeing seismic activity over time, the user can expand or contract the time shown and filter the range of magnitudes to view on the timeline using the sliders at the bottom and right-side of the screen. As with a geographic map view of the same event history, this chronologic view of earthquakes allows the user to select an event to obtain more detailed information about it.
Get to the point in less time; with Infragistics timeline controls and many other data visualization controls, you can work smarter, not harder. Download a free trial of the WPF data visualization tools for yourself today.
Summary
Now the tools are available to you to create your own high-end Business Intelligence solutions in WPF 4 using Microsoft® Visual Studio® 2010 or Expression Blend® 4 with the latest release of NetAdvantage for WPF Data Visualization from Infragistics. You will find multidimensional OLAP pivot grids, seat maps, floor plans, maps, gauges, bullet graphs, timelines, charts, barcodes, treemaps, and more. Make your applications shine today by downloading the 30-day free trial as soon as you get the chance!
