Microsoft Releases ASP.NET Charting Controls

In November, the ASP.NET team released a long anticipated Charting Control along with a VisualStudio.NET 2008 plug-in.

Here are some download links:

• Microsoft Chart Controls for .NET Framework 3.5
• Microsoft Chart Controls Add-on for Microsoft Visual Studio 2008
• ASP.NET Samples

We have tested this charting control by uploading the System.Web.DataVisualization.dll into the application bin directory on our hosting server.

You’ll need to make some minor configuration changes before it will work properly though.

1) The Charting control uses a default location to store the generated chart images; the default location needs to be modified in the web.config for the control to function properly.  You should add/update this line in your web.config:

<appSettings>
    <add key="ChartImageHandler" value="storage=file;timeout=20;dir=
    [Some directory within your site];" />
 </appSettings>

2) This control will only work in Full Trust Mode. If you are hosted our IIS7 hosting platform, you’ll need to elevate the trust level to “full” in your web.config file.

Here is a working sample on our web servers: http://www.win2003hosting.com/testapps/microsoftcharts/

Other resources:

• http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2008/11/24/new-asp-net-charting-control-lt-asp-chart-runat-quot-server-quot-gt.aspx
• http://geekswithblogs.net/ranganh/archive/2008/12/01/charting-in-asp.net-asp.net-chart-controls-for-.net-3.5-sp1.aspx

Frank Cheung
CTO