Changing the background color of ProClarity Performance Map (aka Heat Map)

Wade Dorrell — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 19:45:50 GMT

Customers often want to set the background color of analytic visualizations such as the ProClarity charts & grids, to match a corporate or dashboard theme. Unlike the ProClarity charts & grids, it's not possible to set the background color of the heat map visualization within ProClarity Professional... it's always a cream color... but it can be changed through a simple modification to the PAS server CSS files.

The color is defined per-language in <PAS virtual directory>/<PAS language>/src/treeview.css:

body {
    height: 100%;
    margin: 0px 0px 0px 0px;
    padding: 0px 0px 0px 0px;
    width: 100%;
    background-color: #ece9d8;
}

Feel free to change it for each language pack. Although it's unlikely a PAS service pack or hotfix would update this file, you may have to re-apply the changes after installing a SP or hotfix.

The downside to all of this is it's a global change, affecting all heat maps rendered by the PAS server. I have visions of using URL-rewrite to make this dynamic per heat map instance, but unless someone wants to make my vision reality, that's all it is for the moment.

Google charting

Wade Dorrell — Mon, 05 May 2008 20:59:12 GMT

I was toying around with FriendFeed and discovered Google's charting engine. Mmm, pie:

The engine can render Google Analytics-esque sparklines too. The simplicity and accessibility of this API is impressive... it's all in the URL.

Now, I'm a bit agitated by this discovery, as years ago at ProClarity Greg & I built very similar to this API for doing sparklines, bullet graphs, and other datawords. I haven't shared it with you yet, and I should have. While it was no complete charting engine, and neither is Google's, our implementation was all of 300 lines of C#... so you could probably build & modify the implementation for your own specific needs pretty easily. Please let me know if you want it, and I'll throw it up on Codeplex.

The major downside of our & Google's architecture is your data is relayed in the GET URL. It's getting replicated in logs. In Google's case, it's sent naked across the Internet (invalid certificate/no HTTPS), and aggregated in Google's data centers. According to the TOS this service cannot be relied on for uptime or continued compatibility. It will break for FriendFeed someday. Of course, free isn't always free! There's definitely some reasons to figure out how to host your own implementation on LAN & with security if you're using this for sensitive data or critical applications, and I should have shared it long ago.

PerformancePointy: Wade Dorrell's MSDN Blog : visualizations

Changing the background color of ProClarity Performance Map (aka Heat Map)

Google charting