Difference: CDOverviewDatasetDefinition (2 vs. 3)

Revision 32011-11-03 - JeanNeron

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META TOPICPARENT	name="CDChartDirectorDesignerAPI"

Datasets Overview

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Datasets Overview
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Description:

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Data is organized into a particular structure: a 'data point' is the smallest unit and represents one unit of data; a 'data set' is a collection of related 'data points'; a 'data group' is a collection of related 'data sets' and a 'layer' is a collection of related 'data groups'. 'Layers', 'data sets' and 'data groups' may be named to allow you to work with more than one set of data at a time. 'data points' and 'data sets' can be created independantly of 'data groups' and 'layers'. You only need to assign the 'data sets' to a 'data group' when you are ready to chart the data. This gives you the flexibilty to plot the same data different ways, or to plot different data.

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Data and the presentation of data on a chart is separated into distinct areas, by design. This allows you to have a process that produces a chart, but does not have to know anything about the data that is being charted. A separate process can accumulate the data to be charted, then simply run the other process to produce the chart. The actual data is organized into a particular structure: a 'data point' is the smallest unit and represents one unit of data and a 'data set' is a collection of related 'data points'. For presentation purposes, there is a 'data set template', a 'data group', which is a collection of 'date set templates' and a 'layer', which is a collection of 'data groups'.

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All of the above can be named, or not. If you are working with multiple layers, data groups, data set templates or data sets, you can name them to make charting easier. If you only need one layer, data group, data set template, etc, then you can leave the names blank when you create them.

Attributes of 'layers', 'data groups', and 'data set templates' can all be set individually, ie, you can change the color or shape of all the bars in a 'data group' to make it different from other bars.

For example, let's say we have network usage for 3 different servers for a one week period (Mon - Sun). First we would initialize a 'data set' for one of the servers (possibly naming it 'server 1') via .DATASET INITIALIZE. Then we would add each days network usage for that server via .POINT ADD NEW. We would repeat the steps for the second and third server, naming each 'data set' as appropriate. We now have three 'data sets' that contain the 'data points' of the network usage for each server. To plot this on a bar chart, we would create a 'Layer' for our chart via .XY ADD BAR LAYER, then add a 'data group' via .LAYER ADD DATA GROUP. Next we would add 'data set templates' for each of the 3 servers via .LAYER ADD DATASET. This defines the presentation of our chart, without referring to the actual data. To add the data to our chart, would use .LAYER LINK DATASET to link our previously entered data with the 'data set templates'

The data to be plotted on a chart is kept in a 'data set'. There is no specific limit to the number of 'points' in your dataset. You can also manage more than one dataset at a time by giving each dataset a unique name when you initialize it.

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