February 20th, 2012 by Margaret Skomorokh
Today we are glad to publish a new success story – about AnyChart and Meteomedia AG.
Meteomedia, founded in 1990, is one of the leading weather services in Europe operating its own private weather measurement network and providing detailed data for various weather-dependent industries. The company successfully runs Energy Trading Portal designed for gas and electricity traders as well as energy meteorologists, online Severe Weather Centers in different countries, and other weather portals.
The challenge was to:
- To visualize complex long-range weather forecasts and weather maps for Energy Trading Portal, making it possible for users to compare at a glance different weather models.
- To give users the opportunity to switch quickly between different locations, time ranges, and other parameters.
- To ensure that charts will be easy updatable since new forecast data is added daily or even hourly.
Solution:
- AnyChart solution was used to implement cross-browser and cross-platform animated dashboards visualizing various weather forecasts.
- AnyChart’s interactivity options and ample customization opportunities allowed creating flexible and quickly customizable charts and maps.
- Due to simple XML interface, AnyChart visualizations are very easy to update both manually and via any server-side scripts.
When it comes to making viable forecasts concerning energy price risk and energy demand, weather data is crucial. Temperatures are the key parameter in consumption forecasting. At the same time, the rising energy supply resulting from the availability of renewable energy is increasingly impacting electricity prices, so wind and solar power predictions are also needed. Energy traders are interested both in namely short-term prognoses for the spot market and long-term prognoses for the futures market. And there is no doubt that all these complex data should be clearly and comprehensively visualized.
Meteomedia Energy Trading Portal offers advanced customizable charts and maps of different types (line, range area, bar, and color-coded maps) created via AnyChart engine. They are conveniently grouped in dashboards to provide users with the opportunity to compare various forecasts, e.g. related to the same country. It is possible to add and delete charts as well as to select for each of them a particular time range, location, forecast type, and some other parameters.
The following data is visualized in Meteomedia Energy Trading Portal using AnyChart Charts and Maps:
- Overview charts and ensemble evaluations: air temperature at 2m height, temperature 850 hPa level, 24h-precipitation sum, wind speed mean, probability of general weather situation.
- Map of Europe, climate comparison: temperature deviation in comparison with longtime mean.
- Daily temperatures mean, solar power prediction, wind power prediction, wind power model comparison, precipitation totals.
Alongside with that, AnyChart was used to visualize forecasts for online Severe Weather Centers, which are available to the general public: Temperatures, Precipitation, Sunshine duration, Wind, Wind direction, and Humidity.
Take a look at the sample dashboard from the Energy Trading Portal (click it to view a larger image):
This case clearly shows that AnyChart solution has application in weather forecasting industry and can be succesfully used in other systems.
You can enjoy the full success story here: Meteomedia AG Chooses AnyChart To Visualize Weather Forecasts >>
Or see other AnyChart Customers Success Stories.
January 27th, 2012 by Margaret Skomorokh
Today we start publishing basic tips for choosing between different types of graphs. Visualization can be a very powerful and convincing instrument to present your data – the only thing needed is to use it correctly. One should always clearly understand what exactly he or she wants to show and what is the best way to do it.
There are three main situations when visualizations are made: comparing data, seeing data over time, and breaking data into parts, plus some mixed cases. We will consider them one by one and figure out what type of graphs fits each case. The first post will be about comparing data.
Example 1.
The most common tool for comparing data are bar graphs. For example, here is an AnyChart visualization showing men unemployment rate in the Nordic countries:
As you can see, the difference in the height of bars represents the difference between values pretty clearly. Note that if you need to put long text labels, it is better to make a horizontal bar graph since the vertical axis gives more space for labeling.
See also our documentation and gallery: Creating Bar/Column Chart with AnyChart, Bar/Column Charts Gallery
Example 2.
What if we want to show not only men but also women unemployment rate? Now we have two sets of data for each country, and to distinguish them, we need to use different colors:
Such graphs are sometimes called double bar graphs. They can also be horizontal.
Example 3.
When one needs to represent the correlation between two related values (which can be viewed as a kind of comparison too), a scatter graph is used. Take a look at a chart showing the correlation between religiosity index and suicide rate in different countries:
The position of each point on the horizontal and vertical axes is determined by suicide rate and religiosity index correspondingly. Here, like in the previous case, we also have two sets of data for each country, but the countries themselves are no longer at focuse. The things we want to compare are the number of suicides and religiosity index in general.
While bar charts are good for emphasizing the difference between individual entities, scatter graphs are good for generalizing. The information about particular countries is hardly readable from our graph, but it perfectly shows that more religious countries tend to have lower suicide rates: the points group around an imaginary line that falls down from left to right (sometimes called line of best fit, or trend line). It is considered that the closer the points are to this line, the stronger the correlation is.
See also: Creating Scatter Chart with AnyChart, Scatter Charts Gallery
Check the updated article on how to choose chart/graph type for comparing data published within the framework of the new 7-part Choose Chart Type feature on our blog.
December 27th, 2011 by Margaret Skomorokh
Holiday greetings and our best wishes for a happy and prosperous New Year!
During the last year AnyChart has made another big step forward. We have successfully implemented new technologies and improved our products. The family of our customers has grown up, as well as our team (new departments have been opened this year). We are sure that our charts will keep delighting your eye, and that AnyChart is a part of the future of web and charting technologies.
Let the new year be productive and joyful for all of us. And to get into the festive mood, take a look at the picture of a dragon sleigh:
© Vladstudio
December 26th, 2011 by Margaret Skomorokh
Today we have released AnyChart Stock 1.6.0. This version includes the following changes:
New features
- The ability to specify Z-Index for series to define custom display order for regular series and technical indicators series. Read more about this feature at Series common settings: Z-Index.
- The ability to pin a certain value on a value scale to ensure its visibility. For more information, please see: Y-Axes Settings: Pinned Value.
Bug fixes
- Dashed line annotation slow rendering bug has been fixed.
- The fieldType property in the object model is no longer ignored after calling the applySettingsChanges method.
Version history: http://6.anychart.com/products/anystock7/history/
Trial download: https://www.anychart.com/download/
December 12th, 2011 by Margaret Skomorokh
We are proud that our components are succesully used in a wide variety of industries. The success story we are presenting today is about Signatrol Ltd – a company that has been supplying data loggers since 1994. Their products are used in various areas: warehousing, transportation, food preparation, building management, environmental monitoring of offices, schools, museums.
Signatrol created a low cost wireless monitoring solution — spYdaq. It is a system comprising of a number of radio transmitting sensors that measure parameters (temperature, humidity, voltage, etc.) and send them securely by using a license free radio network to a central Basestation. The system has an ability to store information on the dedicated website. And to visualise the data, AnyChart Stock and Financial Charts component was chosen.
The challenge was:
- To make an online visualization of data obtained from a number of different sensors over long periods of time.
- To provide comfortable navigation through complex graphs.
- To integrate graphs into PHP sourced pages, with data obtained from MySQL databases.
AnyStock was used because:
- It allows for visualizing large sets of time-based data by creating fast and easy updatable charts.
- AnyStock supports advanced interactivity and navigation options. Navigation through data is also facilitated by custom text labels and a smart legend.
- Due to simple XML interface, AnyStock is compatible with different kinds of web technologies and database management systems, including PHP and MySQL.
You can enjoy the full success story here:
Other stories can be found here: https://www.anychart.com/company/success_stories.php
November 21st, 2011 by Margaret Skomorokh
We are happy to publish a new success story, this time about AnyChart and Independent Data Services (IDS) – a company from the upstream oil and gas industry.
IDS, founded in 1995, is the world’s largest provider of web-based reporting and analysis services to the upstream oil and gas industry. IDS’ latest release — DataNet2 — makes full use of Web 2.0-compliant technologies and WITSML feeds to capture and deliver data via the web to unlimited users. The DataNet2 suite of products includes VisNet — a back-end query engine which extracts knowledge from every part of the DataNet2 system.
The challenge was:
- To visualize the data returned by VisNet (KPI’s, benchmarks) and create configurable and interactive charts.
- To ensure that all visualizations would be customizable, matching IDS’ high standards.
- To implement a variety of charts.
AnyChart’s charting technology was used to generate visualizations for VisNet because:
- The component allows for the creation of advanced and good-looking animated charts.
- AnyChart is very flexible and provides a lot of features, which made it a good choice for IDS’ project.
- The AnyChart library includes a wide range of charts which is constantly growing. Currently VisNet supports Bar, Column, Pie, Line, and Scatter graphs, but more will be added.
You can enjoy the success story here:
Other stories can be found here: https://www.anychart.com/company/success_stories.php
November 15th, 2011 by Margaret Skomorokh
Our component for building Gantt charts has been updated. The new version – AnyGantt 4.2.0 – contains the following changes:
Version history: http://6.anychart.com/products/anygantt7/history/
Trial download: https://www.anychart.com/download/
Download for registered customers: https://www.anychart.com/customer_area/
November 14th, 2011 by Timothy Loginov
Today we are glad to announce the release of AnyChart 6.0.5. We are constantly improving the HTML5 engine, and soon it will become fully functional. Besides that, we keep adding new features and refining various aspects of AnyChart, including the smallest details (which, as we believe, are never insignificant) to make it more and more convenient to use.
In AnyChart 6.0.5 we have introduced a number of important improvements:
Important note: Because of the bug in Flash Player 11.0.1.152 Radar and Polar charts are displayed incorrectly. If you use any of 5.x or 6.x AnyChart versions with this version of Flash Player, please, switch either to AnyChart 6.0.5 or to Flash Player 11.1.102.55 (or later).
For more bug fixes and version history, see: http://anychart7.com/products/anychart/history/
Trial download is available at: https://www.anychart.com/download/
Please, feel free to contact us if any questions arise. We appreciate our clients and work hard to anticipate their needs and keep pace with the latest demands of the industry, making our charts even more flexible and attractive.
October 30th, 2011 by Margaret Skomorokh
AnyStock 1.5.1 update is available for download at our site. It includes some significant changes:
Bug fixes
Improvements
- onAnnotationRemove event now returns not only the ID of a removed annotation, but also this annotation as an object — a useful improvement for implementing an “Undo” feature.
- Full compatibility with Flex 4.5 Mobile SDK — you can use AnyStock SWC in your iOs or Android Flex projects.
- Range preset buttons behavior improved, particularly when you sync two different chart objects at one page.
Documentation updates
Version history: http://6.anychart.com/products/anystock7/history/
Trial download: https://www.anychart.com/download/
October 26th, 2011 by Timothy Loginov
AnyChart Team has found in Flash Player 11.0.1.152 a very weird bug that doesn’t manifest itself in the Debug version of Flash Player, but ruins math in the regular version, so we had to debug it in the non-debug version: using ExternalInterface and JavaScript console.
Bug description
In the regular version of Flash Player 11.0.1.152 the following expression:
1/Math.abs(0)
is evaluated as -Infinity, but in the Debug version it is (as anyone expects): Infinity
Reproduce
Here is a sample code you can use to reproduce this issue:
package {
import flash.display.Sprite;
import flash.external.ExternalInterface;
public class MagicWorld extends Sprite {
public function MagicWorld() {
ExternalInterface.call("alert", "1/Math.abs(0) = " + (1/Math.abs(0)).toString());
}
}
}
As soon as you have done this — compile and run the sample in the Debug and Regular versions, and you will see the difference.
The bug has been reported to Adobe: Bug#3011557
The test sample: http://6.anychart.com/temp/bug301157/index.html
