Visualising Data in Silverlight and WPF

2. Visualising Data in Silverlight and WPF Ivan Towlson Mindscape Session Code: WUX305

3. Agenda • Data visualisation and Silverlight/WPF • Visualising objects • Visualising data sets • Toolkits and controls

4. The Business Problem Data != Information

5. The Business Problem • It’s easy to miss important information in a sea of purely textual data • Trends and correlations • Special or different cases • Trouble spots • It’s often quicker to take in information with a graphical assist • Quick way to get a “big picture” overview

6. The Business Problem

7. The Business Problem

8. The Technical Problem • GUI programming stalled in 1991 • Low level graphics primitives • Procedural drawing code • Presenting data in a new UI required a whole new control

9. The Technical Problem • Technical consequences • Custom visualisations required extensive custom code • Expensive to develop • Third party controls • Expensive to buy because expensive for vendor to develop • Specific in purpose • Cost of learning complex new control APIs • Hard to justify the cost unless visualisation was a core requirement

10. The Technical Problem • Business consequences • Encouraged anaemic presentation of data • Displaying data, not information • “Battleship grey” and data grids • Onus on users to detect patterns and anomalies

11. Silverlight and WPF • Replace the appearance of a control without having to rewrite its entire behaviour • Declarative, higher-level graphics API • Flexible data binding mechanisms

12. Silverlight and WPF • Writing simple visualisations is a matter of hours rather than days • It is now affordable to be able to visualise your data your way • Data visualisation is the killer application for Silverlight and WPF

13. Single Data Item Visualisation • Binding • IValueConverter • IMultiValueConverter (WPF only) • DataTemplate • INotifyPropertyChanged

14. demo Visualising Single Data Items

15. Visualising a Collection of Data • Toolkits and controls • Custom visualisations

16. Visualisation Toolkits and Controls • Silverlight Toolkit • http://www.codeplex.com/Silverlight • Charting controls (beta) • WPF Toolkit • http://wpf.codeplex.com • Charting controls (beta) • Third party controls (commercial and free) • Charting, diagramming

17. demo Silverlight Charting Controls

18. Building Custom Visualisations • ItemsControl • Selector • ListBox • MultiSelector • ItemTemplate / ItemTemplateSelector • ItemsPanel / ItemContainerStyle • INotifyCollectionChanged • Bindable LINQ

19. demo Visualising a Collection of Data

20. Summary • Silverlight and WPF data binding is completely different to VB or Windows Forms • Bind sizes, colours, positions, transforms, visibilities • IValueConverter • DataTemplate • ContentTemplateSelector / ItemTemplateSelector • Use panels to perform layout • ItemsControl > ItemsPanel / ItemContainerStyle

21. Call to Action • A meaningful visual display is a great way to put information in front of users • Display information, not just data • It is now affordable to be able to visualise your data your way • Writing simple visualisations is a matter of hours rather than days • But be realistic – embrace “good enough” • Data visualisation is the killer application for Silverlight and WPF

22. question & answer http://hestia.typepad.com/flatlander/ http://www.mindscape.co.nz/ ivan@hestia.cc ivan@mindscape.co.nz

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38. Required Slide Speakers, TechEd 2009 is not producing a DVD. Please announce that attendees can access session recordings at TechEd Online. Resources • www.microsoft.com/teched Sessions On-Demand & Community • www.microsoft.com/learning • Microsoft Certification & Training Resources • http://microsoft.com/technet • Resources for IT Professionals • http://microsoft.com/msdn Resources for Developers

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