| RE: [birt-charting-dev] Chart functional specifications update |
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Paul, Thank you for your feedback. I will update
the interactivity specs based on those use cases and suggestions. Just a
comment on the data being available in the chart component UI: in any case, the
filtering or drill-down will require a regeneration of the chart by the chart
engine, at least the first time (the subsequent times, charts can be cached by
the viewer). I am not sure yet this will fit in the 2.0
schedule, but it ought to be in the specs anyway, the features will be
prioritized at a later stage. Thanks, David From: birt-charting-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:birt-charting-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Paul Clenahan David, Milind, On Chart Interactivity, one area to think
about is whether we can incorporate support for drill down/drill up and filter
type functionality. I realize that the chart infrastructure and APIs will allow
people to use the chart component for this type of interactivity if they want
to build it -- but I'm wondering if we can build some capabilities into this
area in the context of charts that are embedded in BIRT reports. Example scenario #1: I am viewing a bar
chart of world-wide sales by year -- with a bar for each year showing me total
sales. I think click on bat for year "2005" and the chart changes to
show me the sales for each quarter in 2005. Effectively, this "drill
down" has applied a filter to only look at "2005", and has
changed the series from year to quarter. If I wanted, could also drill
back out to the year level. Example scenario #2: I am looking at a pie
chart that shows total sales for each product line in each slice of the pie. I
click on the pie slice and we drill into a pie chart that shows the total sales
numbers for all the individual products in that category. This will only be possible if the data in
the dataset can support the drill-down/up activity. In effect, this means that
this capability would only work where the chart component is doing the
aggregation activity. If the data has already been aggregated prior to be given
to the chart, then no drill-down would be possible. This type of "automatic"
drill-down feature would be very compelling. Note that this is different from
"drill-through", where a user hyperlinks to an additional report that
shows data in different ways. Drill-through is also important, and already
included in your spec via the hyperlink capability. The good part about
offering both capabilities is that drill-through can be used where drill-down
is not possible (e.g. when the detailed data in not available to the chart). On a similar theme, a filter capability
would be interesting -- provide some type of UI gesture that allows the user to
apply a filter to the data being charted. Example: If "color" is in
the original dataset (but not actually charted) then allow the end user to
specify that the chart should only show products where "color=red".
Simple filtering would be all that is required here (in order to keep the UI
simple and easy to use) - along the lines of Excel's Automatic Filter
capability. For either of these features to work, the
chart component UI would clearly need to have the detailed data available. In
some case this might be practical, in some cases not (especially if the
recordset is very large). For this reason, this would be a capability that the
developer should be able to enable/disable. With capabilities along these lines,
charts in the context of a BIRT report now enable business users viewing the
report to answer business questions that the original static chart did not
answer. Example: "Yes, the original chart showed me that 2005 has the
highest sales -- but now I can see which product in 2005 was the best selling
product without going back to the report developer and creating another
report". With this in mind, any interactive features in this area need to
be very easy to use -- since it is the business user who is viewing the report
that is using them. Not sure if any of this is feasible in
BIRT 2.0 -- but it would be extremely powerful and compelling. Paul. From:
birt-charting-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:birt-charting-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of David Michonneau Hi All, Here are updated drafts of the Chart Types
and Chart Interactivity functional specifications. Here are the changes: Chart Types: Extended 3D rotation to three
axes. Changed anchor to position for fitting curve label. FittingCurve now
applies to Series classes. Added Line Chart coloring from Palette. Added
Mockups Chart Interactivity: Marked Rotation as
POST 2.0 feature. Added chart dimension in menu. More details on _javascript_
API. Removed Builder section Please send me your comments if any. Thanks, David |