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Track 2: Performing Visual Analysis

Visual Analysis is an in-context analysis tool to visualize the result of every step of your work. Simply by dragging and dropping data fields onto the layout module, you are able to visually analyze data in either text or graphs.

Business views are the data sources used in Visual Analysis.

Task 1: Analyzing by text

Task 2: Analyzing by graphs

Note: A Visual Analysis license is required in order to perform this track. If you do not have the license, please contact your Jinfonet Software account manager to obtain one first.

Task 1: Analyzing by text

  1. On the JReport Server Start Page, click Analysis in the Create category. Visual Analysis is then displayed in a new tab, with the Select Data Source dialog prompted for you to select the data source used to perform the analysis. You can select a business view from all the public catalogs.

    Select Business View

  2. Go to Public Reports > SampleReport.cat > Data Source 1 and select WorldWideSalesBV, then click OK.

    The group Group button and aggregation Aggregation button fields in the selected business view are listed in the resource panel on the left. You can drag them to the data presentation area on the right to perform analysis.

    Visual Analysis

  3. From the resource panel, drag the group field Country to the row control box for grouping Drop for Row button as the row header.

    Drag Group for Row

  4. Drag the group field Category to the column control box for grouping Drop for Column button as the column header.

    Drag Group for Column

  5. Drag the aggregation field Total Sales to the Label button Label button in the legend section. The report shows as follows. You can hover the mouse on any value to get the detailed information:

    Drag Aggregation to Label Button in Legend

Next we will make use of the Filter panel to filter data in the report.

  1. From the resource panel drag Region to the Filters panel. A filter based on this field is added in the Filters panel.

    Drag Field to Filters Panel

  2. Uncheck <All> and then select Asia-Pacific. The report is refreshed to show the countries in Asia-Pacific only.

    Filter Data

  3. Click Save button on the toolbar.
  4. In the Save As dialog, leave the save location be the My Reports folder, type ProductSales in the File Name text box, and click OK. The current data state is then saved as an analysis template to the My Reports folder in the server resource tree.

Task 2: Analyzing by graphs

In this task we will start a new Visual Analysis session to analyze data by graphs.

  1. Click Resources button and select New from the drop-down menu. A new Visual Analysis tab is displayed.
  2. In the Select Data Source dialog, select WorldWideSalesBV, then click OK.
  3. In the data presentation area, click the Display Type button Display Type button, then select Bar Bar button from the drop-down list.
  4. From the resource panel, drag the aggregation field Total Sales to the row control box used for aggregating Drop for Row button.

    Drag Aggregation to Row

  5. Drag the group field Sales Year to the column control box used for grouping Drop for Column button.

    Drag Group to Column

  6. Drag Category to the right of Sales Year. When an arrow appears, release the mouse button (you can also make use of the button beside a data control box to add a field from the resource list).

    Drag Field near Column Field

    The report appears as follows:

    Report Result

We want to analyze data of the two sales years by quarter, so next we will replace Sales Year with Sales Quarter.

  1. From the resource panel, drag Sales Quarter over Sales Year. When an arrow appears above Sales Year (in the center), release the mouse button.

    Replace Field with Another Field

    In the control box sections, you can also drag and drop a field to the right/left or top/bottom to change the display order of the field, or drag a field out of its control box to remove it.

Next we will try another important feature of Visual Analysis, analyzing with the legend.

  1. Drag Region to the Color button Color button in the legend section. Data of each region is marked by different color. You can click Color button to customize the colors if you want. Here we keep the default color pattern.

    Mark Field by Color

The report is displayed with a scrollbar which is not convenient for comparing data. We can change the fit setting to improve the layout.

  1. Enlarge the browser window size a bit, then select Fit Visible from the drop-down list of Normal View on the toolbar. The report is now fully displayed according to the current window size.

    Display Whole Chart

  2. Hover the mouse on different color sections on a bar and you can see related information.

    Color Section Tips

Visual Analysis supports the Sort feature on the fields used for grouping the columns and rows. Next we want to sort the sales quarters based on their total sales in descending order.

  1. Right-click Sales Quarter and select Sort from the shortcut menu.

    Sort Field

  2. In the Sort dialog, select Descending, check the Sort Using Another Field option and select Total Sales from the drop-down list. Click OK.

    Sort Using Another Field

    The report now displays as follows:

    Sort Result

Lastly we will change the data display type to Pie so that it is easy to find out which region sales the most.

  1. Click the Display Type button Bar button and then select Pie Pie button from the drop-down list.
  2. Remove Sales Quarter and Category from the column control boxes by dragging them out of their positions.
  3. Move Total Sales from the row control box to the Slice button Slice button in the legend section. The report changes to below.

    Pie Chart

    We can see that North America occupies the largest amount of the total sales.

  4. Click Save button on the toolbar to save the data state as an analysis template into the server resource tree.

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