Cool Data Visualization
I wanted to take just a few minutes out this month to post up some of my favorite, more interesting data visualization examples using Microsoft products (SQL, PPS, SSRS, Proclarity, MOSS & Silverlight) as a way to demonstrate making data analysis, scorecards and dashboards exciting and interesting. I will probably not have much of a chance to blog here for a couple of weeks while I am heads-down on getting our BI solution framework for industries launched and rolled out to our field and partners. Enjoy!!
Here is an example of a bubble chart surfacing data through SSRS ( thanks to Rob Wilson for this chart )
Here is an example of a PPS dashboard using Visio for a strategy map, a very nice way to utilize Visio to surface BI:
Here is an example of Sharepoint BI dashboard with Silverlight, Virtual Earth and Sharepoint subsites surfacing data from MDX queries against a SQL Server 2005 OLAP cube:
Perhaps not as cool or snappy is a favorite of mine. Excel is a very, very good reporting tool for data analytics and very popular for reporting. Excel now has support for Edward Tufte's Sparklines. Essentially, you are able to view a chart within a cell, which can help get across an important statistic in a small amount of space, which is a goal of Sparklines:
Finally, here is an example of allowing your users to see their scorecards remotely from their Windows Mobile device:
