Our upcoming release will include a new WinForms component – one we are calling the Sunburst Control for WinForms. It was designed to help you represent hierarchical data in a compact and visually appealing manner. The DevExpress Sunburst Control uses a circular layout to display different levels of the hierarchy, with the innermost circle representing the top level.
As you may already know, our TreeMap Control can be used in a similar fashion. Unlike the Sunburst, the DevExpress TreeMap uses rectangles to visualize values. This allows you to quickly compare data among individual hierarchies.
The Sunburst Control will offer you and your users a different perspective – it uses circular segments to visualize the same data set and show how outer hierarchy levels are related to those in the interior. The angle of each segment under its parent node is proportional to its value.
If you are already know the TreeMap’s data source initialization strategy, you will quickly set up the Sunburst Control as it uses similar adapters (SunburstHierarchicalDataAdapter, SunburstFlatDataAdapter) to visualize data from hierarchical data sets and flat data tables.
var dataAdapter = new SunburstHierarchicalDataAdapter();
dataAdapter.Mappings.Add(new TreeMapHierarchicalDataMapping() {
LabelDataMember = "Category",
Type = typeof(ReceiptsAndExpenditures),
ValueDataMember = "Value",
ChildrenDataMember = "SubCategories"
});
dataAdapter.DataSource = LoadDataFromXML();
sunburstControl1.DataAdapter = dataAdapter;
sunburstControl1.CenterLabel.TextPattern = "Total: {TV}";
sunburstControl1.Colorizer = new SunburstPaletteColorizer() {
Palette = Palette.GreenYellowPalette,
ColorizeGroups = true
};The following is a brief summary of key features we’ll ship in this release:
- Built-in coloring algorithms (colorizers) and advanced segment highlighting behavior
- Tooltip support
If you feel that this new component will help you visualize hierarchical data in your application or if you have any technical question, feel free to leave a comment. Your feedback will help us fine tune our WinForms Sunburst Control so that it addresses the widest possible set of usage scenarios.