I've run across a few 3rd party plug-ins that say they can create basic charts with FMpro. Can anyone offer suggestions or recommendations of their own for creating charts? I'm looking to do simple line charts that would update automatically once new data comes into the db. So once the chart is set up there shouldn't be much more to do a far as maintaining it. Is there anything available like this?

Cheers...

While there are native Filemaker techniques for doing charting...I have found that the plugin make is SOOOOOOOO easy that there is little reason to use native Filemaker functions.

Which do you recommend? Brian Dunning, waves in motion, etc?

TY

Brian Dunning's chartmaker pro is not a plugin. It is a set of techniques that use native filemaker tools to generate calculated charts. The advantage of this over plugins becomes apparent if you need charting to be available on a large number of machines. If you use a plugin you need to buy a copy for each machine, or a volume license, or a developer license, whichever applies. If you use the native techniques you can apply them to any file on any system, or runtime application with no additional cost.

I have used XmChart from X2Max (one of FMForums.com advertisers) and found it to be quite powerful and versitile.

If I were doing live updates via XML, importing 1000's of records (streaming), forcing the db to recalculate very often as new records come in, would brian dunning's calculations bring my pc (2ghz) to it's knee's? Could I expect anything different from a plug-in?

Also, can you offer the names of some of the plug-ins that may be of use?

Thanks for all replies.

XmChart does look powerful. One question I have with any charting, if I run a script and the results are viewable in preview mode, how would that be charted? Would I need to display in layout mode, then chart from there?

TY

With xmChart, the data is send to the plug-in (from Browse Mode), and the resulting image can be inserted into a container field.

If you haven't already, you should try the demo.

The plug-in itself is very fast, the only performance issues you might have is assembing the string of data that you are sending to the plug-in. It depends on what you are trying to show.

The good news is, you can work with the plug-in in demo mode until you know it will work for your solution. The demo is just limited in the amount of time that it will run.

I haven't yet tried xmchart, I'm still trying to figure out how to get my data into FM, but someone mentioned that xmchart uses Excel for it's charting function, is this true?

TY

xmChart builds charts on its own--Excel is not needed.