Using Microsoft's Chart Controls In An ASP.NET Application: Serializing Chart Data

<p> In most usage scenarios, the data displayed in a Microsoft Chart control comes from some dynamic source, such as from a database query. The appearance of the chart can be modified dynamically, as well; past installments in this article series showed how to programmatically customize the axes, labels, and other appearance-related settings. However, it is possible to statically define the data and appearance strictly through the declarative markup. One of the demos examined in the <a Started</a> article rendered a column chart with seven columns whose labels and values were defined statically in the <code>&lt;asp:Series&gt;</code> <code>&lt;Points&gt;</code> collection. </p><p> Given this functionality, it should come as no surprise that the Microsoft Chart Controls also support <i>serialization</i>. Serialization is the process of persisting the state of a control or an object to some other medium, such as to disk. <i>Deserialization</i> is the inverse process, and involves taking the persisted data and recreating the control or object. With just a few lines of code you can persist the appearance settings, the data, or both to a file on disk or to any stream. Likewise, it takes just a few lines of codes to reconstitute a chart from the persisted information. </p><p> This article shows how to use the Microsoft Chart serialization functionality by examining a demo application that allows users to create custom charts, specifying the data to plot and some appearance-related settings. The user can then save a of this chart, which persists its appearance and data to a record in a database. From another page, users can view these saved chart snapshots. Read on to learn more! <br /><a More &gt;</a></p>

Read More...

---