Break in a Line Chart in CR10

[pandpp]

Hello all.

I am using CR10 against an Oracle DB

I have a line chart that needs to have one of the lines break/stop in it.

I have looked at the cr_line_chart_nulls.pdf only, the clear statement at the top of it of

At time of writing, there is no workaround available for CR 10

indicated that this was not likely to work for me. That was 12 months ago, so, perhaps there is now a workaround.

In my chart I have Actuals & Forecast. It is feasible to forecast spending into the future, whereas actuals can only be up until present day.

As such, I have 2 questions, both pretty much interlinked:
1) Can I make the Actuals line just break/stop somehow?
2) The date period is required to display full fiscal years. It is feasible that the forecast expenditure doesn't span the full fiscal period. As such, I need to stop ALL lines at a certain time, but the chart continue until the end of the period.

|                           .
|                          .
|                         .
|        Forecast        .
|........................
|
|
|        Actuals
|    ***********
|   *
|  *
| *
|*
|
|
|-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+
               ^            ^
             Today     End of Data

I have looked at the prospect of underlaying 2 charts to resolve 1) above. The main issue I found was that I couldn't find a way to ensure that the 2 verticals axis were the same scale, seeing as how the Actuals may in fact be zero.
I still have the axis scaling set to automatic, seeing as how the Forecast or Actual figures may be almost any value.

As to 2) above, the number of fiscal years can also be a variable number, such that I can't manually set the horizontal axis scale either.

From the Oracle side I can easily set the data I don't want displayed to be NULL values, but as the chart currently stands, I'm using "For each record", such that the NULL values mean that field is not available to be charted.

Any thoughts/ideas most appreciated.

Regards,

Peter.

 

[paulmarr]

Peter,

A line graph will not do this - as it still has to trail off to show a zero value for the days from today until the end of data.

Try using a combo bar/line graph - the bar being for the actuals and the line for forcast data.

This is achieved by starting with a line graph - then - in the Design view - click on the actual line of the graph to highlight it. Then right click and choose Chart Options -> Series -> Selected Series set to Riser.

This is as "close as I can get" to what I understand from your question.

I hope this helps you!

Cheers,
paulmarr

 

[pandpp]

Paul,

Thanks for your suggestions.

Sadly I have 2 issues with them though:

1) You CAN get a Line Graph to do what I want, just, only CR9 & earlier, at least as of 6/24/2004, as stated in BO's documentation.
I guess this is some method of progress, removing features that are useful.

2) My users don't want a Line/Bar chart combo. I am replicating an existing manual report from Excel, where this thing already exists as a line graph, where lines can & do just start & finish, based on the data series.

Peter.

 

[paulmarr]

Peter,

I have tried and can confirm you are correct. So it looks like my suggestions are also correct - to graphically show the figures that drop off - it has to be a Bar graph. (0 shows no bar)

To answer: 2) The date period is required to display full fiscal years. It is feasible that the forecast expenditure doesn't span the full fiscal period. As such, I need to stop ALL lines at a certain time, but the chart continue until the end of the period.

You will need to create a table of the periods and use a left outer join to the fiscal period in your data.

So . . . I guess you could either do it in CR9, or in excel, or use my suggestion.

Cheers,
paulmarr

 

[Dan3D]

You might want to check a popular charting extension for Crystal Reports:

http://www.threedgraphics.com/tdg/noteworthy/crystalreports.asp

It has a macro designed to treat values of 0.0 as NULLS which might help.

Dan Weingart
OEM Technical Manager
Three D Graphics, Inc.

http://www.threedgraphics.com