Creating a Dynamic Target Range using Pentaho Report Designer and a Line Chart

Here is a quick example of how you can easily create a line chart with the ability to dynamically set a target range on the chart.  Here is what the end results look like:

How do you do this?  Well it is really pretty straight forward.  First you create your connection and retrieve the data you want to graph.  Then drag a chart object to your report and set the category-column, value-column, and Series-by-value to your data.  Once you have your chart reading your data set, next you will create your parameters, here is an example of the lower range parameter

Once you have your parameters created so that end users can dynamically set the range, all you need to do is add a post-processing script, you can use the script below (I've highlighted the parameters as well):


import java.awt.Color;
import java.awt.Dimension;
import java.awt.Font;
import java.awt.GradientPaint;


import javax.swing.JPanel;


import org.jfree.chart.ChartFactory;
import org.jfree.chart.ChartPanel;
import org.jfree.chart.JFreeChart;
import org.jfree.chart.axis;
import org.jfree.chart.axis.CategoryAxis;
import org.jfree.chart.axis.CategoryLabelPositions;
import org.jfree.chart.axis.NumberAxis;
import org.jfree.chart.labels.ItemLabelAnchor;
import org.jfree.chart.labels.ItemLabelPosition;
import org.jfree.chart.labels.StandardCategoryItemLabelGenerator;
import org.jfree.chart.plot.CategoryPlot;
import org.jfree.chart.plot.IntervalMarker;
import org.jfree.chart.plot.PlotOrientation;
import org.jfree.chart.renderer.category.BarRenderer;
import org.jfree.data.category.CategoryDataset;
import org.jfree.data.category.DefaultCategoryDataset;
import org.jfree.text.TextUtilities;
import org.jfree.ui.ApplicationFrame;
import org.jfree.ui.Layer;
import org.jfree.ui.RectangleAnchor;
import org.jfree.ui.RefineryUtilities;
import org.jfree.ui.TextAnchor;


CategoryPlot plot = chart.getCategoryPlot();
        plot.setBackgroundPaint(Color.lightGray);
        plot.setDomainGridlinePaint(Color.white);
        plot.setRangeGridlinePaint(Color.white);
IntervalMarker target = new IntervalMarker(dataRow.get("range1"), dataRow.get("range2"));
target.setLabel("Target Range/Goal");
target.setLabelFont(new Font("SansSerif", Font.ITALIC, 11));
target.setLabelAnchor(RectangleAnchor.LEFT);
target.setLabelTextAnchor(TextAnchor.CENTER_LEFT);
target.setPaint(new Color(222, 222, 255, 128));
plot.addRangeMarker(target, Layer.BACKGROUND);




return chart;


That is really all it takes!  If you want to see a working example of this, feel free to download the sample .prpt file here.

HAPPY CHARTING!!!