Accessing Data
Defining Layouts
Designing Look and Feel
Navigating and Selecting
Searching and Filtering
   
Chart Types

The Silverlight chart control can adopt any chart type you might need from the following list, from basic charts to highly specialized charts:

  • Area
  • Funnel
  • Spline Area
  • Stacked Area
  • Bar
  • Line
  • Stacked 100% Area
  • Stacked Bar
  • Box
  • Pie
  • Stacked 100% Bar
  • Stacked Column
  • Bubble
  • Point
  • Stacked 100% Column
  • Stacked Line
  • Candlestick
  • Scatter
  • Stacked 100% Line
  • Stacked Spline
  • Column
  • Scatter Line
  • Stacked 100% Spline
  • Stacked Spline Area
  • Doughnut
  • Spline
  • Stacked 100% Spline Area
  • Stock
Data Mapping

Accessing data quickly and efficiently is a high priority for any Silverlight chart control. Data presented in the chart is divided into Data Series (corresponding to records or objects), which are further subdivided into Data Points (corresponding to fields or properties).  It is this sequence of Data Points that get plotted on the chart for your users, and often the user wants to compare the Data Series to draw conclusions from the data.

Each chart type has its own requirements for data, but there is one uniform means of mapping that data to the chart's requirements by using the DataMapping property.  Most single value axis chart types require you to define only two mappings (Label and Value).

DataMapping="Label=Name;Value=Tenure"

This data mapping would bind to the Name and Tenure properties of your business object (or the [Name] and [Tenure] columns of your table) and plot them as the labels and values of a single value axis chart type (such as a bar or column chart).

Sophisticated chart types (like financial charts) need more data to bind data points against, but one benefit of the DataMapping property is that you can specify these extra mappings and the chart control uses them only after you change to a chart type that uses these data mappings.  This allows you to change the chart type with one line of code without having to re-touch the data mappings for the new chart type.

Financial Charting

Popular specialized chart types such as the Japanese candlestick (also called a "doji" candle chart) and OHLC bar/stock chart are fully supported.  There are numerous chart parameters you can set to affect their styling and appearance, and they support the data mappings to meet their voracious appetite for time series, multi-field price data.

Multiple axis support and the ability to overlay multiple chart types allow you to superimpose many kinds of technical indicators onto your financial charts.

Interactivity

Take advantage of the event model built into the Silverlight chart that allows you to react immediately to users of your Web-based charting application, without the cost of invoking calls back to the server.

You can readily identify interactions your users have with chart data points by handling the chart control's DataItemMouse events.  For example, you can take action when the user selects a slice of a pie chart, such as cause it to explode out of the pie chart right then and there.

Stacked Charting

Most chart types plot their data series as separate traces across the scene graph, whereas in a stacked chart type each successive data series is added to prior data series so that their chart primitives appear stacked one on top of another.

In a variation of stacked charting called the 100% stacked chart, the stacks scale to span the entire height of the chart area.  This kind of stacked chart shows the proportionality of data points in each data series to each other, just like a pie or doughtnut chart.  A 100% stacked chart shows more relationships in less space than a pie or doughnut chart.