>Hi there,
>
>I work on a data collection package in VFP 7.0 and need to enhance my package by adding some sort of Control Charting. I'm considering a 3rd party vendor or some sort of add-on tool that I can use, but not sure if the latter will allow for enough flexibility. The 3rd party vendor option (naturally) is rather expensive, and the budget is tight right now. My customers would like to see something that I can start rolling out in production in early Jan. '04.
>
>This is all brand new to me.... Any suggestions as to what route to take? Any charting add-ons that VFP works well with? Easy to use? Any 3rd party products that work well with Fox?
>
>All of the data I would like to plot is in a temporary table on the PC's hard drive already (available for another purpose). I would like to be able to make a call to the charting program and pass it the data I want it to chart as opposed to the program making a call (via ODBC or another method) to the FoxPro database to get the data for the chart(s).
>
>Please let me know your thoughts/ideas!

Several general approaches come to mind:

- If the users have Office/Excel, you could use Office automation and make Excel display your charts

- There are no doubt lots of 3rd party components available, at a range of prices. Places to look:
http://www.componentsource.com
http://download.cnet.com

- If flexibility is of interest, you might want to investigate Adobe SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics). In September Lauren Clarke of Cornerstone Systems gave a presentation to our user group. He has some resources on his Web site: http://www.cornerstonenw.com/RandD_id_svgtech.htm

SVG is like the Adobe Acrobat reader - Adobe gives away the viewer for free. SVG files are basically formatted text that can be easily generated from VFP. It gives you graphics primitives, which is a two edged sword - it takes more geometry/math to create your charts than a dedicated charting program, but it gives more (basically, ultimate) flexibility.