Not all chart types that are available with BI Publisher Template Builder for Microsoft Word can be created with the chart wizard directly. This blog entry will show you how to build a vertical line chart and configure the layout, based on the creation of a chart with the help of the chart wizard.
First you create a line chart with the help of the chart wizard and configure it as far as possible. For example change the color of the lines, marker text or the font style.
Diagram wizard configuration of a horizontal line chart
The result is a chart with horizontal lines and the format properties that were chosen in the chart wizard:
Horizontal line chart printed with Oracle BI Publisher
To figure out, which kind of charts are “draw”-able with the BI Publisher you can take a look at the graph.dtd. If you have the BI Publisher Plugin for Microsoft Word installed you can find this document type definition (DTD) in the jar-files of the plugin. To find the graph.dtd, go to the directory where the plugin is installed and look for the dvt-jclient.jar. Open this jar-file with a zip utility and navigate to oracle/dss/graph. There you can find the graph.dtd. You’ll see that there are more types of charts available in the graph.dtd than in the chart wizard of the plugin. The attribute graphType is the one, you have to look at. It provides different possibilities and one of these is the chart with vertical lines, which is intended for this blogs example.
To change the graph type you have to look in the advanced tab of the chart wizard. In this tab the graphs properties are stored as an XML file. The line chart that is provided by the chart wizard has the graphType attribute “LINE_VERT_ABS”. VERT means in this context, that the data axis runs in vertical direction. A vertical line chart has the graphType attribute “LINE_HORIZ_ABS”.
Changing diagram type to vertical line charts in Oracle BI Publisher Template Builder for Microsoft Word
After the change of this attribute, the charts looks as follows:
Horizontal line chart printed with Oracle BI Publisher
The charts can be inserted in BI Publisher reports and delivered to different media. The chart properties and attributes are stored in an XML file that is generated by the wizard. Not only the format of the chart is stored there but also how the data is represented. Once the chart is created with the chart wizard there is always the possibility to change the properties of the chart and reconfigure it. Additionally there are a lot more attributes which could be changed to enhance the appearance of the chart but the graph wizard does not expose all of them as shown by the example of the chart above. All possible attributes are available in the DTD file graph.dtd. It provides access to all possible graph types, layout configurations, text formats and more with the BI Publisher Template Builder for Microsoft Word.
The graph.dtd explains all possible attributes using comments and by that gives the chance to make more fine-grained customizations of graphs than it is possible using the chart wizard only.
