Diagra Charting Software

Create complex, data-aware graphics and charts with Diagra™, our graphics component. Easily render graphs, piecharts, scatter plots and more, associate them with a data source, and control every visual element. Ideal for financial applications, it is widely used by fund managers to automate factsheet production. Diagra™ can be used either to manage charts within RML documents, or as a standalone graphics server.

Diagra™ is a chart and diagram server. It lets you create batches of charts, diagrams and barcodes from dynamic data – either as single charts in real time, or as large batches at high speeds. It outputs color-separating EPS graphics for professional printing, bitmaps for the web, and standalone PDFs for portable delivery, as well as being the "graphics engine" for ReportLab's direct-to-PDF reporting tools. Best of all, it lets you deliver the same charts in all of these media.

Diagra has been designed to meet the exacting standards of professional designers working with financial and other complex data. Every attribute of every item in a drawing can be controlled. This is essential when arranging multiple charts on a diagram, or aligning chart content with an enclosing Quark document or web page. You can control individual data points or axis labels, as well as setting the rules by which axes are scaled and data is handled.

Diagra runs on almost all operating systems and can be integrated in many ways: as a web application responding to HTTP requests; from the command line; via COM, CORBA, Java or C APIs; or it can be customized to meet your requirements.

There are three core uses for Diagra:

  • EPS output for professional publishing There are many excellent database publishing products which allow you to create batches of documents from data sources, typically in Quark XPress. Publishers need a way to create batches of EPS drawings, with precise control over inks and fonts. Until now, there has been a limited choice of charting tools able to output color-separating EPS files. Diagra is the solution.

  • Web Graphics on demand Web development teams need charts on demand as well, especially in financial services. These can be generated in batches or in response to user requests, from file-based or relational data sources. But Diagra can serve many more needs, creating any content that needs to come out in a bitmap. It can even serve as a master "button wizard" which generates consistent bitmap buttons for sites, given a list of strings in a file or database table. What is more, it is "future proof" – the imaging model is SVG compatible and we will output SVG when browsers are ready for it.

  • PDF Data Graphics and Charts Many special purpose applications need to create data graphics. PDF is an ideal delivery format for custom graphics – it offers more advanced graphics capabilities than any GUI, and is already on everyone's desktop. Diagra drawings integrate smoothly with Report Markup Language and the ReportLab PDF Library produce crisp and precise charts and graphics within the body of a PDF document. Full-sized Diagra drawings can also be output as single-page PDFs. Many enterprises need all three. Financial, pharmaceutical and oil companies in particular depend critically on data visualisation and need to deliver the same information in different media at different times. Diagra is a consistent and extensible platform for standardising graphics across the Enterprise.

For more information, download the Diagra Datasheet