I have progressed the Software Delivery trending tool quite nicely and has it often happen, the (interim) result drives the long term design.
So far I have 2 files for the toolkit: an executable that generate a Javascript output (based on the Evt_AeX_SWD_Execution table) and a web-page to display the java script as line charts (using the Google Chart API as usual).
You'll find a sample output at the end of this blog post.
There are a few design problem that were "solved" in the current build (we are still at version 0):
- All the data is written into a single java script file
- No more than 100 policies will be added to the js file
- Visualization is based on a two column layout
- By default 6 charts are displayed on a page view
- You can set the view to at most 10 charts per page
- Next and Previous Page navigation links allow to scroll thru the full data set
- A home link allows the user to set the view back to default (view page 0 with 6 results per page)
The tight navigation config is due to a couple of requirements I imposed on the UI: minimize scrolling and load time. With 20 charts to render the page (especially if you are tied to Internet Explorer) can be seriously slow to render. And with 20 charts each 350 pixel high your page scroll will be quite long.
Instead I have settled for the 2 column 3 row layout that fits in a 1200x1100 window. This allows (if your screen permits) to comfortably check all charts at once, with the scrolling available at a fix position up left (for the previous page link) and up right (for the next page link).
A view of the beta UI (with default settings applied):
