Comparing Discrete and Continuous Data Visualization in ActiveAnalysis

A new feature in the GrapeCity ActiveAnalysis Beta is the ability to switch between Discrete and Continuous attributes.

This feature is particularly useful for analyzing data across Dates where you would not only want to plot data against discrete Date values as mapped from the database but would also like to better discover any trends in the data for a given time span.

ActiveAnalysis can take discrete values of specific types (numbers or dates) and display them as series of data along a continuous axis. This results in two benefits:

• Display more information in less space.
• Understand data trends for a given time span.

All attributes and hierarchies can be switched to continuous mode, although not all types of attribute fields make sense in continuous mode. ActiveAnalysis displays the results if it makes sense; otherwise, no values are displayed.

Each member must be able to produce its own continuous value, which is only possible in some situations. This is because ActiveAnalysis cannot determine whether an attribute or hierarchy has continuous data; it simply tries to interpret the data as continuous and display it if possible.

As mentioned earlier, the value must be a Number or a Date type to be displayed in continuous mode.

ActiveAnalysis Automatic Encoding Feature and Benefit

The newly released GrapeCity ActiveAnalysis 2 Beta for .NET and Silverlight has a few interesting new features.

The support for Microsoft Silverlight based data analysis and data visualization user experience with Microsoft Excel export of the analysis data are of-course the big ones but in this post, we will briefly cover a different new feature.

Automatic Encoding uses a set of rules to determine the best encoding type (graphical representation) to use for analyzing your data based on the way measures and attributes are arranged on the data shelves.

For e.g. Are you looking at Date based data on the column shelf and place a measure on the row shelf? We’ll automatically use the line encoding. Using something other than dates in a similar situation? We’ll use the bar encoding. In the screenshot below, notice the "Auto Bar" setting in the bottom left corner.

                                                  ActiveAnalysis Automatic Encoding Example

So what's the benefit?

This feature makes it easy for end users to concentrate on discovering new trends and insights in their data without having to worry about changing the encoding settings to match new layouts as they iteratively do their data analysis.

To learn more, read the Encodings section in the ActiveAnalysis product documentation.