Developer: Add charts to ASP.NET web application

Add charts to ASP.NET web application

Microsoft's Chart control for ASP.NET enables developers to add attractive visualization to data in their web applications

Sandeep Koul

Friday, July 17, 2009

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BANGALORE, INDIA: Information in the form of data is very critical for any organization and for future business planning, analysis of data is important. The best way to analyze huge amounts of data is by using different charts.

Suppose you are in the business of manufacturing two different products and you want to know about the sales trend of previous years so that you can focus on manufacturing of a single product instead of two in future.

The best way for analysis in this case could be using a neat Line Chart. A single view of lines in such a chart would be enough to understand sales trends, which in turn will help you make quick and timely decisions. Yet another example can be a product website that compares sales of products of leading brands for customers, at the click of a button.

Implementation
To use the Chart control one needs to have Service Pack 1 installed both for .NET Framework and Visual Studio 2008. To start implementation download and install Microsoft's Chart Controls ('MSChart.exe') from tinyurl.com/5lqhes . One can also install Visual studio 2008 tool support by downloading and installing 'MSChart_VisualStudioAddOn.exe' from tinyurl.com/6b5qya.

This will provide intelliSence support while designing and will also give 'Toolbox' integration. Once you have installed both these tools, you are ready to create ASP.NET web application. Start with creating a new ASP.NET project ('TestCHART'). In this implementation we are using C# as the programming language. Now drag and drop 'Chart' control in 'Toolbox' under 'Data' on 'Default.aspx' (in design view). When one places a chart into the Web forms designer, a new entry is placed 'web.config' file under '' section:

This entry allows one to use the chart control with the familiar asp tag prefix. Visual Studio also adds HTTP handler entry shown below into '' section and '' section for use with IIS and Visual Studio Web Development Server.

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