I have been working on a business intelligence application recently and did a lot of research for a Flash based library to build out dynamic charts. There are a number of players in the market, some free and some even open source. I ended up choosing a product called amCharts which seemed very flexible and the pricing was generally lower than the competition. You can download and use the charts for free with the “chart by amCharts” text in the top left corner, this comes in handy when evaluating. Being savvy with JavaScript, I liked the fact that there was a powerfully API behind the charts for data and settings manipulation. As such, there is no need for postbacks or tedious AJAX calls.
Another selling point was the ASP.NET control library they offer which made development much quicker. I also chose the developer license to get the full Flash source code for some custom modifications. One last cool feature is the chart builder at http://extra.amcharts.com/editor/ which makes visualizing the charts and generating the settings file a breeze. Charts like this can really add some “wow” factor to an application. They have an active community forum, plenty of documentation, and a helpful staff so check them out.
Click here for a quick demonstration of a dynamic pie chart inside a draggable box which should be ready for release soon. If you are interested in the demo source you can download it here. Check out their website for more demos and details.
Very cool, professional looking charts, I was actually looking for a charting library to create a sales projections plug-in for my Shopping Cart, will look into amCharts.
Jeff on June 17, 2009 at 11:34 am