Click on a link below to launch the desired demo. Silverlight version 3, 4 or better is required to view the demo in the browser.
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Silverlight as a Business Intelligence Client
Working with Business Data
In this demo, you can see how Silverlight can interact with a very large amount of data locally on the Silverlight client. A million records are locally generated. Furthermore, in this demonstration, you can see Silverlight performing map reduce calculations on millions of records. .NET LINQ over data structures is used in this demo.
Persisting Local Data
This demo shows how one can persist data locally on the Silverlight client using a custom cache manager. This can be extended to use metadata, caching or small data bases in business intelligence scenarios. This can significantly improve performance in large data service applications.
Silverlight Dashboard Example
This is an example of a dashboard completely created in Silverlight. Notice the components of the dashboard are all hosted in a single Silverlight application.
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Adding Interactivity to Business Intelligence Data
Lazy Loading List Box Data
This demo shows how Silverlight can be extended to work with large data streams. No matter how much data is available for analysis, there are limits to how much can be consumed by the user. Furthermore, a large majority of the time, the user may not need all of the data loaded. This custom control takes advantage of this by only loading additional data as it is needed.
Interactive Data Paging and Filtering
This demo shows how you can leverage Silverlight controls to add fluid interactivity to common business intelligence operations. Smartphones and tablet device users expect this type of interactivity with next-generation gestures like flicking. Could you imagine poking a touch screen several times to just move over to the next data screen?
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Introduction to Data Visualizations
Chart Data Visualizations
Charting components are a fundamental requirement to build a business intelligence solution. Silverlight includes a highly customizable data visualization package. In this demo, you will see how a Silverlight chart can easily be extended to create a visualization for multiple series.
Building a Tag Cloud
Tag clouds are very popular controls that visually amplify popular data items. A tag cloud is not a native control to Silverlight. However, this demo shows how one can be simply mashed up from several Silverlight controls.
Using Geographic Visualizations
Microsoft provides a Silverlight Bing Map control that can be used for geographic visualizations. This control is fantastic for creating geospacial business intelligence solutions. This demo shows a ficticious example of taxi cab location pickups that paid a great fare. This can be used by taxi cabs to select locations that garner higher fares.
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Creating Data Visualizations for Analysis
Improving Trend Analysis
In this demo, you will see a before and after of two trend charts. The second trend chart standardizes the charts in percentage form. As you can see, this clearly makes the trend line spikes much more distinguishable.
Comparing Ratios
This demo of ratios shows what can be done with simple graphics in Silverlight. The scale differences in the circles amplify the insight gathered from the visualization.
Word-Sized Charts (Sparklines)
This demo shows the power of the customizability of the Silverlight charting controls. Applying new styles allows us to create sparkline charts (word-sized visualizations) that can be used to provide additional wisdom such as trending to numerical data. Sparklines are very popular and included in Office Excel 2010. Sparklines can also be used to deliver mobile business intelligence solutions. For a more advanced demo of sparklines, scroll down to the Trellis visualization.
Using a Reference Line
In this demo, reference lines are added to an existing charting visualization to highlight key values. This demo shows how KPIs can be placed into charts.
Word-Sized Bar Charts (Sparkline Bar Charts)
This demo demonstrates the ability to render a Silverlight chart as a word-sized bar chart.
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Enhancing Visual Intelligence in Silverlight
Data Visualizations - Using Graphical Symbols
In this data visualization, you will see an example of how visual symbols are used to deliver visual insight. The data visualization compares two fictitious armies.
Cross-Tab Data Visualization (Trellis)
This is an example of a more complex data visualization that utilizes several Silverlight concepts. A grid is used to surface several sparkline charts that can be used for a trend comparison. This is also known as a trellis visualization.
Data Visualizations within an Environment
In this demonstration, you will see a data visualization that is integrated with the environment. Expression Blend 3 with Silverlight can be used to create immersive environmental visualizations. These type of visualizations are popular in publishing as well as news broadcasts.
Providing Data Visualization Options
This demonstration shows the best practice of providing an end user a data visualization option. Instead of crowding screen real-estate with multiple versions of the same visualization, providing an option allows the user to choose the one they are most comfortable with. Silverlight storyboardd animations are used to highlight transitions between different views.
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Applying Collective Intelligence
Working with the Rating control
In this interactive demonstration, you will see how you can collect explicit information from an end-user. Furthermore, this demo shows how the rating control can be leveraged to provide real-time Collective Intelligence feedback calculations. Being able to collect and surface user-generated data is very important for social networking interfaces. Silverlight includes controls like the Rating controls that can be customized for collective intelligence scenarios.
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Predictive Analytics
Profit from Sales Forecast Control
In this interactive demonstration, you will see how you can create a complex visual predictive analytics tool to forecast net income from sales. This tool performs all the calculations locally and provides real-time insight. Notice how the control mitigates input errors.
Applying a Statistical Model for Predictive Analytics
This predictive analytics tool shows how you can utilize the Poisson statistical model to determine the probability of a baseball batter's performance on a given day. A simple interactive slider is used to simplify user input and mitigate error.
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Improving Performance with Concurrent Programming
Improving Performance of the User Interface
This demonstration shows how complex algorithms can slow down the user interface. In business intelligence scenarios, you may have several complex calculations that need to happen before the UI is updated. This can limit the fluidity of the interface. Using concurrent programming techniques can help dramatically improve UI performance by making background threads do most of the processing.
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Using The Pivot Viewer
Consuming An Existing PivotViewer Collection
This basic demo shows how a PivotViewer collection (CXML) can be consumed in a Silverlight application hosted in another domain.
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Bullet Graph Control
Bullet Graph Business Intelligence Scenarios
The custom bullet graph control can be used in a variety of renderings. Notice the different ways the ranges and colors are used.
Interfacing With a Silverlight Bullet Graph Control
Dependency properties in a custom control allow you to utilize some additional tooling while designing Silverlight applications. Furthermore, notice that in the demo below you can easily animate the control and utilize element binding.