Greating graphs is one area that a better gui would be helpful.

The Graph API manual is over 600 pages. It has virtually no error checking and is very time consuming to debug and get a detailed graph to work. Have you ever spelled "true" with an uppercase T and taken hours to find your mistake?

I know IBI is working on this.

How many people create graphs in WebFOCUS?

Do you output in the new SVG format?

How do you find using the API?

Lenny

Graphs... where do I start... I've been working on graphs for a while now and even with the new 5.3 graphs, like you said it takes tons of time just to figure out little things when trying to display a graph that you want.

I've entered in a number of cases online for errors which I can't seem to explain.. things that used to work but not so great in the older graph engine to things that do not work at all in the new Graph engine... I remember hearing a buzz saying the new graphics package would be much better and I was actually looking forward to seeing it in action... but what I get is a new package that just changed from JVM to Java (requiring all our 200 users to install the plugin) and it pretty much has the same functionalities / errors in it.

One that boggles me is when selecting an area on the graph in a scatter plot graph with the GTREND=ON, the trend line which used to be straight in the full graph ends up being warped at the right and the left of the "Zoomed in" graph... users are stuck wondering exactly what that means when zooming in.

Also what's confusing is they release the new graph engine and the GUI can't even support the new Graph Engine... makes you wonder if they may have released it too early.

I agree its tough looking through the 1347 page manual on Graph API but at the same time its really nice having access to the underlying functionalites of the graph to allow lots of customization.

Well that's my vent for the day.. now its back to customizing graphs

Leo

Leo, are you saying that the new grafix in 53 are not 'thin client'? that my site visitors will have to install a plug in in order to view?

Well that depends what output format you decide to go with for the graph. I believe you can set that with

ON GRAPH SET GRAPHEDIT SERVER

I can't be certain since I keep on getting an "Odin Error" when setting GRAPHEDIT to SERVER and currently working on figuring that out. So as it stands, my users needed to download the JRE plugin for IE to be able to view the graph. My understanding would be if the server would send it a GIF, no plugin would be required but I can't test that since I get the error.

Leo

We have been creating graphs and setting GRAPHSERVURL.

ON GRAPH SET GRAPHSERVURL &&GRAPHSERVER
ON GRAPH HOLD AS PDFGRPH FORMAT SVG

The graphs are held and imbedded in a PDF.
I haven't head to install any plugins.

Yeah there are ways to not install the plugin, just the way we interact with the graphs on a webpage and keeping relatively the same format required a plugin install...

Also I think if you wanted the SVG format, you had to add the plugin from Adobe? Not sure havn't tried it.

Leo