Author: Steve C. Orr
Profile:
Steve C. Orr is a Microsoft Certified Solution Developer (MCSD) and a Microsoft MVP in ASP.NET. He’s been developing software solutions for leading companies in the Seattle area for more than a decade. When he’s not busy designing software systems or writing about it, he can be found at local user groups and assisting in the ASP.NET newsgroup as both contributor and advisor. Steve is also a frequent author and contributor to asp.netPRO magazine.
Author: Alex Homer
Profile:
Alex Homer has been awarded MVP status by Microsoft, and is also a member of the CodeWise community, the ASP.NET Insiders group, and the INETA Speaker Bureau. Alex is a prolific author who has written or contributed to over 40 books on Web technologies for Wrox Press, Sams Publishing, APress! and Addison Wesley. In addition Alex has presented at ASP.NET Connections and VS.LIVE conferences and conducted training sessions on ASP.NET and XML. In what spare time is left, he runs his own software and consultancy company Stonebroom Ltd.
Author: Dino Esposito
Profile:
Dino Esposito is a trainer and consultant based in Rome, Italy. Member of the Wintellect team, Dino specializes in ASP.NET and ADO.NET and spends most of his time teaching and consulting across Europe and the United States. Prolific author, Dino writes the "Cutting Edge" column for MSDN Magazine and contributes to the Microsoft's ASP.NET DevCenter and several other magazines. Recent books are Programming Microsoft ASP.NET (Microsoft Press, 2003), Applied XML Programming with the .NET Framework (Microsoft Press, 2002), and the upcoming Introducing ASP.NET 2.0, also from Microsoft Press. When not writing or teaching, Dino is likely speaking at industry events such as Microsoft TechEd, DevConnections and WinDev.
Review Published:
Author: Stephen Walther
Profile:
Stephen Walther has extensive experience developing real-world web sites. He was the lead developer for the Microsoft ASP.NET Community Starter Kit. A Web site produced by Microsoft to illustrate "best practices" for building ASP.NET applications. Stephen has been working with ASP.NET since he was invited as part of a select group to preview the technology by Microsoft while it was still in the alpha stage of development. He taught the very first class in ASP.NET, in July of 2000, to an international group of programmers. He has written or contributed to a number of best-selling books on ASP.NET and Active Server Pages and has been involved in the development of ASP.NET 2.0. Stephen is currently working on a number of ASP.NET 2.0 books and continues to offer training throughout the world.
Author: Mahesh Chand
Profile:
Mahesh Chand is a Microsoft MVP, MCP, .NET consultant, author and founder of C# Corner. He has been working with .NET technology since pre beta releases. Mahesh's background includes a Master's in Computer Science and Applications and B.Sc. in Mathematics. Mahesh is also an author of several .NET programming books. His expertise includes C#, Web Services, ADO.NET, GDI+, Windows Forms, Project Server, Sharepoint Portal Server, Crystal Reports, SQL Server 2005 and Visual Studio .NET. Currently he is working with Windows Vista related programming using .NET 3.0, XAML, WPF and other cutting-edge technologies.
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Author: Mike McIntyre
Profile:
Mike McIntyre is Senior Developer and Partner at aZ Software, LLP - and a self proclaimed .NET addict. Mike is a Microsoft MVP with 28 years of development experience and holds two B.S. degrees (computing science and business administration). Since 1988, aZ Software has provided computing solutions to enterprise customers. aZ Software has developed business solutions based on Microsoft® technologies including SQL Server, Access, ASP, Visual Basic, IIS. aZ Software has focused on .NET since November 2001.
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Author: Steve Schofield
Profile:
Steve Schofield is a Microsoft MVP, ASP Insider, and founder of the popular ASP and ASP.NET community site ASPfree.com. Steve has published numerous articles for online publications such as builder.com and most recently for IISAnswers.com. Steve, a system administrator with a developer focus, maintains adminblogs.com and is currently working on IISlogs a new development project to automate management of IIS log files.
Author: Laishram Priyokumar
Profile:
Laishram Priyokumar is a MCSD .NET and Brainbench Advance Java certified Senior Engineer. Working with Cincom System India Pvt. Ltd and well experienced with .NET, J2EE and RDBMS technologies. Laishram is a regular author for c-charp corner a web site speccializing in .NET and ASP.NET topics.
Review Published:
Author: Maxime Marck
Profile:
Laishram Priyokumar is a Microsoft Certified Professional, Student-Engineer Supinfo Alsace SUPINFO graduate year 2007.
Author: Clemens Vasters
Profile:
Clemens Vasters is co-founder of the Germany-based developer services firm newtelligence AG. Clemens Vasters is a Microsoft Regional Director, Microsoft Solution Architect MVP, and Microsoft Certified Architect and has over 14 years of professional experience as developer and architect, is the author of several books, and is one of Europe's most popular conference speakers on Microsoft technologies. In the past 18 months, he spoke at over 70 events in 29 countries, including Microsoft TechEd USA, Microsoft TechEd Europe, the European Microsoft Longhorn Developer Preview, and the Microsoft EMEA Architect Forum. Clemens current work focuses on distributed systems technologies and architectural principles and he is one of the "digerati" of the Indigo product team at Microsoft.
Feedback:
My quick, all-in-one summary of .netCHARTING is: Professional, rich, easy to learn and use, incredibly well documented with lots of samples and the charts it produces are -- for lack of a better expression -- adorably cute. When I downloaded the package to review it, I had set aside time to put together a project and toy around with all the options to figure out how things work. It turned out that I couldn't come up with an example scenario that wasn't sufficiently covered by the samples collection that ships with the product and that by itself is demonstrating a level of commitment to developer support that's hard to beat. If you are looking to create professional, fast-rendering charts in .NET applications you should definitely give .netCHARTING a good, close look.
Author: J. Michael Palermo IV
Profile:
J. Michael Palermo IV is a Microsoft Regional Director based out of Phoenix, Arizona. Michael has been endorsed by Microsoft as a Microsoft Solutions Framework Practitioner & Trainer. He has been awarded Most Valuable Player (MVP) for XML technologies. Michael is also a member of ASP Insiders. Although Michael's passion is sharing technology in a classroom environment, he has set time aside for co-authoring several books, engaging developers at user groups, and speaking at DevDays and MSDN events.
Feedback:
I spend much of my development time “behind the scenes” in business, messaging, or data centric components. When I am asked to help the team with UI, I am no longer in my comfort zone. When asked to create something visually stimulating, I am looking for help myself. If business requirements mandate a visual way to represent data outside of typical HTML, I need a partner to complete the task. I found such a partner with .NET Charting. After downloading the zip from the dotnetcharting.com site, I immediately followed the simple directions to get started. Although it would have been nicer to have an automated setup, the process of preparing my test site and Visual Studio .NET was relatively painless. When I did encounter an issue, I found the online support quickly steered me in the right direction. Once I had everything in place, I found the Chart control very easy and intuitive to use. In no time, I was creating very attractive graphical content. And then I realized what I had done… I was creating cool UI! I returned to the online gallery to get more ideas. I also peeked at the samples included in the zip download. Before I knew it, I was feeling proud of what my report pages looked like. For all developers who shy from UI, team up with .NET Charting like I did. In no time you will be a graphical hero!
Author: Jeffrey Richter
Profile:
Jeffrey Richter is a co-founder of Wintellect (www.Wintellect.com), a training, debugging, and consulting firm dedicated to helping companies build better software, faster. He is the author of several best selling .NET and Win32 programming books including "Applied Microsoft .NET Framework Programming" (Microsoft Press). Jeffrey is also a contributing editor to MSDN Magazine where he authors the .NET column. Jeff has been working as an independent consultant with Microsoft's .NET Framework team since October 1999 and has also worked with Microsoft's XML Web Services and Messaging Team ("Indigo") since 2003.
Feedback:
I think you've done a great job here. I really like how simple the object model is for setting up the data. Just examining the source code on some of the ASPX page makes it clear how easy it is to set up this stuff and how simple it is to use a chart on a page. Developers should be able to get up to speed and start being productive immediately! I love this. I also like that you have a Window Forms version that has kept the same object model with just a few changes like Width & Height
being int and HitTest support. I also really like the Streaming feature so that files do not have to be created on the server. Finally, I was impressed with the performance of the chart creation.
Author: Patrick Hynds
Profile:
Patrick Hynds, MCSD, MCSE+I, MCDBA, MCSA, MCP+Site Builder, MCT, is the Microsoft Regional Director for Boston, the CTO of CriticalSites, and has been recognized as a leader in the technology field. An expert on Microsoft technology (with, at last count, 55 Microsoft certifications) and experienced with other technologies as well (WebSphere, Sybase, Perl, Java, Unix, Netware, C++, etc.), Patrick previously taught freelance software development and network architecture. Prior to joining CriticalSites, he was a successful contractor who enjoyed mastering difficult troubleshooting assignments. A graduate of West Point and a Gulf War veteran, Patrick brings an uncommon level of dedication to his leadership role at CriticalSites. He has experience in addressing business challenges with blended IT solutions involving leading-edge database, Web, and hardware systems. In spite of the demands of his management role at CriticalSites, Patrick stays technical and in the trenches, acting as project manager and/or developer/engineer on selected projects throughout the year.
Feedback:
Charting has been a challenge on many of the projects I have undertaken over the years, as everyone seems to have a different perspective on what features are important and which are not. I have personally been involved in developing more than one custom charting tool for various customers, but none of them has come close to what Dot Net Charting (www.DotNetCharting.com) provides. I was impressed by the plethora of features it provides (many of them new) as I have run into customers looking for many of them in my travels. Some developers will be hard pressed in the beginning if they are not accustomed to reading the setup instructions. I had to copy the components database directory into my virtual directory along with the dll and create a writable temp directory that is configurable through the chart object's properties (if you miss this step the chart provides very clear and detailed instructions in the error message). It didn't slow me down much, but be warned that reading the help is advised, though for the most part very clear and painless. I also noted the lack of a Royalty Free license which I hope changes soon as I have worked with many ISVs that would prefer to leverage a strong component like this in their products rather than build their own. The samples are impressive and give you a great feel for how much power has been packed into this component. I especially like the ability to display the x axis labels at an angle as I have found that is really the only way to make dates on the x axis really readable. Another great aspect is the varied backends that are supported including Oracle, SQL Server, Excel and even mySql. I have to say that my overall experience in test driving .Net Charting was very positive and I expect to be using it the next time I need robust charting.