## Charts

Chart organizes and graphically presents data in a way that makes it easy for end users to see comparisons, trends, and patterns in data. It represents the report data in a visually straightforward form. A chart is based on a chart platform. On the platform, chart paper, legend, and labels make up the normal chart. You can create a chart that contains only simple DBFields, or a complicated chart that contains DBFields, groups, summaries, and even formulas. Normally, DBFields, summaries, and formulas in a report are represented in a chart using chart data markers, and groups are used to produce category names and data series names. DBFields can also be used as category names.

Normally, a chart displays values in a static way and you cannot change the values on it once it is created. However, JReport provides you with options to make the chart interactive and dynamic. For example, if your data source uses data that changes quickly over time such as stock market values, you can create a real time chart, so that the chart will update itself based on a defined interval by using the real time data from the data source. You can make a chart move at runtime based on the value changes of a motion field by creating a motion chart. In a motion chart, the chart is playable. You can start or stop the chart to play the dynamic trend of the motion field, control the moving speed of the chart, and if you create a bubble motion chart, you can even use a trail control to make the chart move showing a bubble or line trail. JReport also supports dynamic charts in Excel, that is you can make data in a chart map to a single cell in Excel, then when you change the data in a cell, the corresponding change will also be displayed in the chart.

In addition, you can make your chart scrollable by adding a scrollbar on the chart, using which you can control the visible value range on the X axis of the chart. You can also use the mouse cursor to select the values you are interested in to have the values zoomed in.

In JReport, charts are data containers, which means that when a chart is inserted into another data container, you can set up a data container link between the chart and its parent (for details, see the section Setting up data container link).

This section describes the following tasks related to charts:

- Chart elements
- Chart types
- How data is represented in a chart
- Inserting a chart
- Modifying a chart
- Formatting chart elements
- Adding conditional color fill to a chart
- Binding a link to a chart
- Creating a scrollable chart
- Creating a real time chart
- Creating a motion chart
- Creating dynamic charts in Excel

See an example: The SampleComponents catalog, included with JReport Designer, contains reports that have examples of how each component type could be used in a report. For the chart component example, open `<install_root>\Demo\Reports\SampleComponents\Chart.cls`.