Friday, December 13, 2013

OBIEE - Better looking Bar Graph

The basic aim of this post is to change the default bar graph, for example this:

to this:



You might have seen the Darkhorse Analytics post "Data looks better naked" and especially this gif: http://darkhorseanalytics.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/data-ink.gif. I will follow similar guidlines.

When looking at the basic graph, 

We see the Revenue appears twice. It's redundant information. We can remove the title in the Graph properties:

And get this result:

But I prefer to give significant title (In this case "Revenue by Product Type") and remove both the axis titles (uncheck both the "use XXXX name as axis title"):

The result looks cleaner:

I prefer to make the header lighter:

Now it's time to change the bars interface. In graph properties - > Titles and Labels we can edit the Data Markers and change the Display Option from "Default (On Rollover)" to "Always": 

In most cases we don't really need the gridlines, they are just noise. Under Style I will remove the Gridlines (by changing from "Default" to "Specify"):

Last part is to Hide the Vertical Axis labels:

I like the result: 

But I think this would look better as horizontal bar and I prefer the Cylinder over the default Gradient. It looks cleaner:


 
I prefer to remove the animation. It's great for few first times but later becomes a bit annoying.

And if you follow this post, by Paul Cannon "Globally disable chart animations in OBIEE 11g" you will learn how to disable the animation globally and on the way remove the shadow from graphs.
(in few words: change the first line of the file  dvt-graph-skin.xml that is located under the s_blafp\viewui\chart\ folder for the pre 11.1.1.7 OBIEE and in 11.1.1.7 at s_FusionFX\viewui\chart 
From: <Graph>
To: <Graph visualEffects="NONE" animationDuration="0">
)

The final result is:


9 comments:

  1. hello,
    thanks for your post.
    Question related to chart formatting: Is there any way to customize the border of a bar?
    regards.

    ReplyDelete
  2. How can you create actions on the PI-charts and then when user clicks on PI-Chart, grab that specific value and open another report ?

    ReplyDelete
  3. How can you create actions on the PI-charts and then when user clicks on PI-Chart, grab that specific value and open another report ?

    ReplyDelete
  4. Thanks for the Post !!
    How to modify the value when you Hover hover on the bar chart ? I tried to fix this issue but failed. Could you please help me ?

    Thanks in Advance !!

    Regards,Narendra

    ReplyDelete
  5. I have same graph as above. But can do like different color for all the bar ? means for 1st bar red and for second value blue etcetera.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Not sure what is the rule for colors, but you can always use "style and conditional formatting".

      Delete
  6. can we show the label only for one bar in vertical graph

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Don't really understand why you will want it. You can always create a case column where there is a value for columns you want to see their label or null where you don't.

      Delete