Customer Reviews

Practical WPF Charts and Graphics (Expert's Voice in .NET)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

As a professional programmer I don't have a lot of time to waste learning all the details to master a new programming area. I had to buy five books on database programming to get one decent database working for my clients. With WPF I have found there are just three books to buy to master its intricacies. Get "Windows Presentation Foundation", "Pro WPF", and Dr. Wu's "Practical WPF Charts and Graphics". The other books are helpful, but not really necessary.

This book gets right down to the etails of mastering chart graphics. Within a few chapters, specialized charts are covered. Dr. Xu shows how to do almost every form of scientific and financial charting I have ever encountered. Although the code is designed to show off the approach to building a single chart application, the data series and configuration style objects introduced by the book can be easily altered to build multiple chart conglomerations for stock charts with indicators or scientific multiple view sets with minimal work. I found that the XAML code needed to be tweaked to insure that it coupled multiple canvas areas to the correct code operations, but there are always going to be small glitches when code examples are expanded for professional needs.

The code examples are introduced in a simple to complex sequence that allows the reader to get easily accustomed to the support objects and to understand how chart styles need to be adapted to each type of chart. I figure that this one book has saved me at least a hundred hours of exploring failed approaches to WPF charting. I have two other books by this author and I knew that this one would display the same efficiency of introduction and clarity of organization as before. I was thoroughly satisfied with his latest approach to explaining WPF charts. I have now moved on to combining several simultanous charts with chart interaction.

By the way, previous to applying Dr. Xu's writings, I was looking at paying up to $2000 for the code behind the EzyStockCharts library to solve my charting needs and I would have been forced to build a C++ wrapper around the code to use it in a .NET environment. That would have been very time consuming and I would only have found a two dimensional solution for all my time and cost. The source code for all the C# examples in the book and a few more is currently available and easily downloadable from the internet. The download also includes the binaries to run each project and allows you to quickly discover exactly how each sample behaves in the real world of your computer.

If you are serious about investing in your software career, or in avoiding a costly project failure, this book will give your knowledge base a definite competitive edge. I'm looking forward to applying the information that I encountered in this book to the display of large database patterns as well as my stock chart displays. I hope you see the advantage of becoming an instant charting expert by reading this book.

I bought "Practical WPF Charts and Graphics" to learn how to draw scatter/line plots and histograms - no 3D for me - and found it perfectly adequate. The book and its companion site give you code for several plot types, so you can start playing in no time. I did, and then things went downhill. Presented code is, in my opinion, poorly written and needs heavy refactoring and expansion: the small class library I eventually ended up with has little in common with Mr. Xu's. The author does not bother with explanation, and is happy to let the code run: getters and setters alone add at least 10 pages, and large blocks of code migrate from one chapter to another. Proper editing could have cut down the page count by half or more. Although helpful, this is not a proper book, but a collection of code print-outs.

I purchased this book mainly for creating line charts. I had some very specific requirements and I couldn't find a third-party control (open source or commercial) that met every requirement. Dr. Xu's book was recommended so I purchased it from Amazon and I haven't regretted that purchase.

This book was a fabulous jump-start. I was able to quickly produce a control that supported a lot of the features that were requested. After a little extension and refactoring, I've been able to meet every requirement.

I was surprised to find logarithmic axes not covered in the book. Extending the code to use logarithmic and mixed linear/logarithmic axes was straight forward. The way the material is presented was essential for grasping the basics needed in order to make that and other extensions.

Dr. Xu began with a very simple chart and extended it, building upon a simple foundation. Each new feature was added until we've constructed a stand-alone chart with decent capabilities. After we have a stand-alone chart, we learned how to take that chart and create a reusable control. Precisely what I needed.

The lack of logarithmic axes, non-interactive legends, and other minor quibbles reduced my rating from five to four stars. These and other enhancements were easy enough to add, thanks in part to Dr. Xu's presentation and WPF.

I would recommend this book to anyone considering writing or purchasing a chart in WPF. It has been a great resource and it will stay on my shelf for some time to come. Good job Dr. Xu!

When I first picked up this book I was very excited with the possibilities. Unfortunately I didn't have a chance to give it a thorough read through before buying it and, needless to day, I was a bit disappointed.

The author may have a phD in theoretical physics but that doesn't translate very well to OOP design and approach. His lack of OOP left me scratching my head many times wondering why he was doing things the way he was doing them. I gave him a chance each time though to show me the pattern through the madness but I was always left flat.

His object heirachy leaves a lot to be desired (it's practically flat with very a very strange mix-in of responsibilities for classes (the author would do well to study SOLID design principles before attempting another OOP design).

There were so many places where he could have utilized the WPF framework (Dependency Properties, DataTemplates, Adorners, etc..) but the code basically boils down to a winforms style approach on top of WPF.

It's a good reference for the math and techniques required to present chart data in a meaningful way but his approach is so far from what WPF represents that calling it WPF Charts and Graphics is huge stretch.

The description of one of the code samples in this book says "you don't need to understand the mathematics behind this method in order to use it in your WPF chart applications". (Page 306.) And there is no explanation given for the math in the sample. So you might be tempted to just use the code as is. But turn to page xxiv where they have printed a confusing restriction on using code samples: First it says you can use the code in this book in your application. Then it says if you use a significant amount of example code then you have to get permission from the author and the publisher. It doesn't say exactly how much code you can use. Then it outright bans the use of sample code if your product is commercial. So what the author wants you to do is to use the code samples in your program without understanding it (no explanation given for some code samples) so that once your product becomes successful he can sue you and take your money. Shame on the author. None of the computer books I have ever purchased have this kind of restriction on sample code.

WPF is mostly about 3D. There is nothing useful in this book about 3D graphs and charts. The overall impression is that the author had useful things to say in the C# Practical Charts and Graphics book, then decided to do the same things in WPF, didn't quite figure out how things are done there and just quit trying.

I have the C# Practical Charts and Graphics book and it has a lot of useful stuff, including 3D graphics, so I was surprised that the WPF book offers little more than drawing a sphere or a cube (which any introductory WPF book will teach you). I am bitterly disappointed, as I was really looking forward to see how 3D charts and graphs can be done in practice.

If you need 2D simple charts and graphs, you may find something useful in the book (hence the two stars); why you would want to use WPF for 2D charts is beyond me though. If you want 3D, look for another book.

Added comments (August 2011): Examples seem to work well now, and things in them are reworked and generally in much better shape. Unfortunately, the explanations in the book are now quite detached from the examples. Anyway, I'm much happier with the examples now, so I change my vote from 2 to 3 stars.