June 7, 2004 at 11:27 am
Hello,
Can anyone give me some suggestions or point me in right direction ... I'm trying to obtain a tool, preferably free and fairly simplistic, to graphically display dynamic data (Sql Server 7/2000) in a chart or graph ie: similar to Excel but with "linked" table functionality of Access?
Many thanks. Jeff
June 8, 2004 at 8:59 am
"... similar to Excel ..." why not Excel? It's not free, but I think I know what you mean. I've tried a few charting controls for .net, and ended up buying .netCharting's tool, but to answer your question; have you tried Excel? You could either pull data into a spreadsheet from Excel, or push data into an Excel spreadsheet as a linked server from SQL Server. I've used (a somewhat clunky) approach in the past where I dump data (via a linked server to Excel) onto a 'data' worksheet in an Excel workbook and had a graph/display on another sheet that used formulas to get at the 'data' sheet.
-Ken
June 8, 2004 at 9:45 am
Thanks spongemagnet ... great suggestion ... but how would you accomodate for the updated chart data range? Each time you append data, how would the data series change to capture the newly appended rows ie: original A1 to A51; new rows get added after A51 (ie: A52 to A100), but chart series is only looking for original range (A1 to A51)?
Many thanks. Jeff
June 8, 2004 at 5:06 pm
How about looking at Reporting Services - If you have a SQL Server license you are entitled to use it. A bit of setting up may be involved. We are about to start looking at it.
June 10, 2004 at 7:45 am
Hi Dormer,
Good idea. I initially started to set this up, but it was becoming cumbersome, so I thought I would ask around for other suggestions. If you get it going, and are happy with the results, I would really appreciate a knowledge transfer from yourself.
Many thanks. Jeff
June 10, 2004 at 8:16 am
You would define your axis' in columns instead of cell ranges (A$ instead of A1..A51). Also, I set up routines to copy a template over the spreadsheet/linked server then name and copy that somewhere else as part of the process.
Just one more thing; If you do something like this with Excel, know that what you're doing is at or pushing the practical limits of using Excel. If take the time now to explore something richer, like Reporting Services (as it sounds you've already started looking at) you'll end up with something more scalable and easier to work with in the long run.
-Ken
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