Introduction

Microsoft has just launched a very rich chart control for .NET web and Windows Forms applications. Let’s take a look at some features from it.

Chart Types

The following chart types are available:

  • Bar and columns
  • Line
  • Area
  • Pie and Doughnut
  • Point
  • Range
  • Circular
  • Accumulation
  • Data Distribution
  • Financial

You still have the option to combine more than one chart type.

Bind Types

The following options are available to be used as bind types for your application charts:

  • XML Files
  • Excel Files
  • CSV Files
  • Arrays
  • IEnumerable objects
  • Dataviews

How To…

The examples and documentation are really good and to work with the new Microsoft Chart control is very straightforward. Drag and drop a chart control, set properties in design and / or runtime and it’s done!

Namespace

The namespace you are going to use is System.Web.UI.DataVisualization.Charting.

Main Properties

  • ChartAreas: It is the area where a chart is plotted. Your chart may contain more than one chart area, that means you may plot more than one chart by render and you may even overlap charts.
  • Series: It is the data you may plot on your chart area.
  • ChartType: The chart type property is under the Series property and defines how your data series will be displayed on a chart area.
  • Axes: Defines properties for the X and Y axes like appearance and titles.
  • Palette: Defines the colors set for your chart.
  • Titles: Defines text that may be used to describe a chart, an axis or any other part of the chart.
  • Legends: Defines the legends that will display the data series information.
  • Labels: Defines text that may be displayed close to axis, points and custom labels.