News
ComponentOne OLAP for WinForms Boosts Data Analysis
ComponentOne, a leading provider of .NET components for enterprise dev shops, last month released a new suite of components that provide online analytical processing (OLAP) and data dashboarding functionality. ComponentOne OLAP for WinForms consists of five controls: Panel, Grid, Chart, PrintDocument, and the C1OlapPage control that gathers the other four controls within a convenient, tabbed interface.
Bernardo Castilho, chief technical officer at ComponentOne, said the OLAP for WinForms suite borrows much of its interface and functionality from that present in Microsoft Excel. Developers familiar with Excel pivot tables, for instance, will be very comfortable working with the OLAP for WinForms interface, Castilho said. "We focused on making this as easy to use and as obvious as possible."
The Panel control provides access to raw data sources, while Grid and Chart controls provide Excel-like Pivot Tables and advanced data visualization to application development teams. "A lot of people want to build dashboards. They want to see analytical views of data. With OLAP you can see trends in data. You can get more insights from the data," Castilho said."
ComponentOne is currently working on prototype versions of the OLAP component suite for both Silverlight and SharePoint. He expects those versions to appear by the end of the year and to ship in the 2010 Q1 iteration of ComponentOne's Studio suite product. A WPF version of the OLAP product is expected out soon after. "That should be very easy because it is a very direct port from Silverlight," Castilho said.
The new OLAP controls come at a time when Microsoft has increasingly provided built-in controls for its various application platforms.
"When we started there were very few commercial quality components like grids and charts and things like that. Now we are seeing very specific components. They are being commoditized," Castilho said.
ComponentOne OLAP for WinForms is available now. Pricing starts at $1,800.
About the Author
Michael Desmond is editor in chief of Visual Studio Magazine and former editor in chief of Redmond Developer News. He has served
as senior editor of news at PC World and executive editor at Multimedia
World magazine, and has written for dozens of publications and Web sites.
Desmond has also written four computing books, including Microsoft
Office 2003 in 10 Simple Steps or Less.