Republished with Permission - Original Article
Microsoft recently released a cool new ASP.NET server
control - <asp:chart /> - that can be used for free with ASP.NET
3.5 to enable rich browser-based charting scenarios:
Once installed the <asp:chart/> control shows up under
the "Data" tab on the Toolbox, and can be easily declared on any
ASP.NET page as a standard server control:
Figure 1
<asp:chart /> supports a rich assortment of chart
options - including pie, area, range, point, circular, accumulation, data
distribution, ajax interactive, doughnut, and more. You can statically
declare chart data within the control declaration, or alternatively use
data-binding to populate it dynamically. At runtime the server control
generates an image (for example a .PNG file) that is referenced from the client
HTML of the page using a <img/> element output by the <asp:chart/>
control. The server control supports the ability to cache the chart
image, as well as save it on disk for persistent scenarios. It does not
require any other server software to be installed, and will work with any standard
ASP.NET page.
To get a sense of how to use the <asp:chart /> control
I recommend downloading the Microsoft Chart Controls Sample Project.
This includes over 200 ASP.NET sample pages that you can run locally.
Just open the web project in VS 2008 and hit run to see them in action - you
can then open the .aspx source of each to see how they are implemented.
The below example (under Chart Types->Line Charts->3D
Line and Curve Charts) demonstrates how to perform Line, Spline and StepLine
charting:
Figure 2
The below example (under Chart Types->Pie and Doughnut
Charts) demonstrates a variety of pie and 3D doughnut options:
Figure 3
The below example (under Chart Types->Advanced Financial
Charts) demonstrates some graph charts:
Figure 4
In addition to the above samples, you can download the Microsoft Chart Control Documentation or ask questions on
the Chart Controls Forum to learn more.
This should provide a useful (and free) addition to your
standard ASP.NET toolkit of functionality, and enable you to easily add richer
visualization and data workflow scenarios to your ASP.NET applications.
