Top 10 charting controls for DOT NET software development companies
In the era of information, data visualization plays an important role in enhancing and making information systems useful to decision makers. This allow important data to be visualized properly so that important concepts, information and analytics are made handy to end users. Charting controls are important for DOT NET software development companies while developing software with data visualization. PIE Chart, LINE Chart, BAR Chart, BUBBLE Chart, PYRAMID chart etc are some of the charts that helps display information meaningfully with analysis. The charting controls allow user with additional features like sorting, filtering, grouping, searching, merging, splitting and exporting data in required format.
In this article, we discuss about Top 10 chart controls that are very popular, feature rich and widely used by custom software companies in India to build information rich softwares.
1. LightningChart Ultimate
LightningChart Ultimate is the fastest, popular and widely used 2D and 3D measurement, financing, research and trading data visualization SDK for software development based on WinForms and WPF. LightningChart Ultimate is entirely GPU accelerated (Direct3D) and performance optimized data visualization control for presenting masses of data in 2D XY graph, 3D XYZ, polar, smith and 3D pie / donut views.
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Fastest rendering data visualization toolkit for .net framework | Supports only Window and WPF Application |
| Short loading delays | |
| Better graphics quality |
2. Telerik RadChart
RadChart is an unrivalled and performance enhanced charting tool that helps developing next-generation software. It is highly feature rich with great data visualization capability and helps in better analysis of complex data. RadChat allows transformation of business data into animated charts and interactive UI. It is compatible with WPF.
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Supports multiple data sources | Does not support scatter line chart |
| It does not require additional assemblies | Server side click events |
| Better technical support | |
| Good performance from speed perspective |
3. DevExpress Chart
DevExpress charting tools are highly popular for data visualization that is concise and readable. XtraCharts suite is highly customization control library which is used for endless business scenarios. It is equally suitable for real-time charting or analysis of multi-dimensional data. DevExpress WPF chart control supports built-in animation effects, conditional appearance options and extended interactivity.
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Highly customization and flexible | Comparatively slow |
| Good performance | Do not manage rendering of web chart to the image |
| Numerous In-built supportive controls | Used in WinForms control |
| Supports MVVM architecture | |
| Supports multiple data source |
4. Chart FX
This is a charting tool that supports .NET, HTML5, COM, WPF, Silverlight and SQL reporting services technologies. Chart FX is considered as one of the most powerful and versatile multi-platform tool for web and desktop software data visualization.
This provides software companies with advanced data visualization and analysis features with minimal integration effort. It enhances user interface and has ability to export the charts in various formats.
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Highly extensible | Scalability and performance issue |
| Support multiple technology platforms |
5. Infragistics Chart
Infragistics chart is known to provide rich charts with less code. Infragistics Charts is Windows Forms Chart Control that renders a broad range of rich, high-fidelity chart types from familiar bar, line, area and pie to more complex financial, candle and radar charts. It helps building complex charts with series collections, chart area collections and chart layers collections.
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Easy-to-use | Support only few chart like Data Chart, Doughnut Chart, Gantt Chart, Pie Chart |
| Highest quality visual appearance | |
| Handle real time feeds |
6. Microsoft Chart
Microsoft Chart controls enable software development companies to create Windows Forms applications with simple, intuitive, and visually compelling charts for complex statistical or financial analysis. Window form chart control support Zooming and scrolling.
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Well documented | Does not support Cursors, Zooming, and Scrolling, Printing feature in web application |
| Ready code templates | |
| Ability to view controls in action | |
| Supports all chart types | |
| Support for AJAX click events |
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7. Nevron Chart
Nevron Chart is the most leading charting control for DOT NET software companies. It can easily be integrated with WinForms, ASP.NET, WPF and ASP.NET MVC projects. Nevron chart covers 2D and 3D charting types and is suitable for profession, business, scientific, real time monitoring and other types of applications.
It only provides great data visualization but is complemented with interactive features like data zooming, panning, scrolling and hit testing.
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Fast performance | It does not support all charting types |
| Highly robust tool with great controls | |
| Better image quality | |
| It is offering a free charting solution for WinForms, WPF, and ASP.NET, covering basic charting functionality |
8. SciChart Chart
SciChart chart type that provides good performance, unlimited multiple X/Y axis, interactive zooming and panning and rich annotations API. It supports about 25 chart types and is infinitely extendable CustomRenderableSeries. It also supports WPF 3D Chart Controls including Real-time WPF 3D Surface Mesh Chart, WPF 3D Point-Cloud Chart, WPF 3D Bubble Chart, WPF 3D Scatter Chart, 3D Column Chart etc.
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Reduces development costs | Some weird internal exceptions in SciChart |
| SciChartSurface and SciChartLegend are separated control you can’t save them to same bitmap |
9. Highcharts
Highcharts is a JavaScript library based charting tool for software. It provides many pre-built graphs like spline, area, areaspline, column, bar, pie, scatter etc. Highcharts is a charting library written in pure JavaScript and it offers an easy way of adding interactive charts to web site or web application.
It has very simple API that is easy to learn and also light weighted. It allows user to use entire framework or selective modules as required. It is inspired by ReactJS, AngularJS, KnockoutJS and also supports two-way binding to get synchronized model and view.
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Light weight charting tool | It supports only web application |
| Highcharts JS is compatible with older browsers as well like IE6, etc. | Axis labels may overlap if long enough |
| Highly customizable | No support for custom graphics and text in the generated charts. |
| Numerous chart types and the ability to combine them in one document | |
| Availability of charts in any of the following formats: pdf, png, jpg, svg. |
10. Fusion Chart
Fusion Charts is a paid charting JavaScript library and renders charts out of the box. It accepts input parameters and returns the chart as output. It is fairly easy to integrate this library with other libraries, frameworks and languages.
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Supports only web application | Complex customization |
| Can be used to handle large scale projects |
Conclusion:
Chart controls helps in enhancing user interface and data visualization in most meaningful way. It is difficult to tag any charting tool as the best. Choice of charting tool by DOT NET software companies depends on project requirements, back-end technology, charting performance, cost and many other parameters. This list is an indicative list that a DOT NET software company can use to select.