Value Visualizers in Report Workshop for Delphi and C++Builder

Value Visualizers

Visualizers change their appearance depending on the value of a data field, a report variable or an aggregate function (in cross-tab tables).

Report Workshop offers two types of visualizers for numeric values:

• color and opacity scales
• diagrams

All of them are displayed at backgrounds of report table cells.

All types of visualizers can be exported when saving report results to HTML.

Color scales

Scales allow assigning background color of table cells conditionally, depending on a value.

You can define a scale based on two or three colors.

A similar feature can be found in some spreadsheet applications (like Microsoft Excel), but in Report Workshop you can define not only colors, but also opacity scales.

Diagrams

Diagrams are displayed above a cell background, but below a cell content. If a regular cell background image is assigned, a diagram is drawn on top of it.

Report Workshop offers the following types of visualizers:

• data bars
  this visualizer displays a horizontal or a vertical bar having a length proportional to the value
• area size
  this visualizer displays a shape having an area proportional to the value
• repeated shapes
  this visualizer displays a count of shapes proportional to the value
• colored shapes
  this visualizer displays a shape having a color and rotation depending on the value
• signal strength
  this visualizer displays a diagram that is usually used to show a signal strength or a volume
• pie
  this visualizer displays a pie slice having an angle proportional to the value
• gauge
  this visualizer displays a gauge, values may be in “red”, “yellow” or “green” zones

A similar feature can be found in some advanced spreadsheet application (like Microsoft Excel), but in Report Workshop diagrams are not based on raster icons, they are drawn directly in cells. This approach has the following advantages:

• drawing and printing at the maximum possible quality
• any size and colors of diagrams
• very flexible and customizable appearance (each visualizer has many options)

Report Workshop has an open architecture, so you can implement your own visualizers.

Other possibilities to visualize values

Programmers can implement custom field types, allowing to display field values as images. Our examples include “star” field type, displaying integer values as N-pointed stars.

This type of visualization has a limitation: unlike background diagrams, minimum and maximum visualized values are not available for programmers.