Integrating Panels

In s-Dashboard, a panel is a visualization object, such as a bar graph or map, that displays data from a stream or streaming view in s-Server. You need to create these streams or views outside of s-Dashboard, either using hand-coded SQL or StreamLab. See s-Dashboard Input Overview for more information.

This section covers the following topics:

This page covers the following subtopics:

Panels Overview

Panels can read from any stream or view in s-Server or StreamLab, regardless of schema. You can display multiple panels in a dashboard by changing a dashbaord's layout.

Individual panel types, such as Bar Charts, Dials, Areas, Bollinger Bands, Scatter Plots, and Maps, all have specific data requirements. All panels require numerical data, but some also require ROWTIME, a key column, or latitude/longitude to work. See Table of Panel Types and Chart Types for more details.

Getting the right results in your panels will take some time. See Suggested Panel Development Process for ideas on developing panels.

The Select Panel dialog box divides these into categories according to their data needs:

Many dashboards are built using either the Vega visualization grammar or the Chart.js Javascript charting. You can create your own panel types using either framework. s-Dashboard provides customizable panels for this purpose.

Table of Panel Types

Panel Type Data Accepted Customizable
View Stream as Table All Yes, in terms of preset table styles.
View Rows Over Time Numerical Extensively in terms of appearance. Bars Over Time and Radar Chart Over Time use Chart.js and have advanced options. Areas, Bars, Lines, Scatter let you change color scheme, interpolation (cardinal, linear, step), as well as some other options.
View Rows Over Time: Bollinger Bands Columns need to be named avg, avg_upper, avg_lower, avg_upper2, and avg_lower2, where avg is the running average and the rest are the bounds. "avg" can be any prefix. Can change update frequency, band colors, and interpolation (cardinal, linear, step).
Geographical Streams Need lat and lon columns. For choropleth map of Pan and Zoom, need key and value columns. For Pan and Zoom, key column required for Key Color Map. For World Events, can change map color scheme and map area covered. Can change diameter, marker icons, event labels, and add key color map for Pan & Zoom Map.

Chart Types

View Stream as Table Panel View Latest Row: Bar Chart
View Latest Row:
Dials Chart
View Latest Row:
Pie or Doughnut Chart
View Latest Row:
Polar Area Chart
View Latest Row:
Radar Chart
View Rows Over Time:
Bars Over Time
View Rows Over Time:
Line Plot Over Time
View Rows Over Time:
Radar Chart Over Time
View Rows Over Time:
Time Series
View Rows Over Time:
Area Over Time
View Rows Over Time:
Bollinger Bands
View Rows Over Time:
Lines (Rickshaw)
View Rows Over Time: Scatter (Rickshaw)
View Rows Over Key Column:
Bars Over Key
View Rows Over Key Column:
Bubbles Over Key
View Rows Over Key Column:
Radar Chart Over Key
Geographical and 3D Streams:
Bubble Chart
Geographical and 3D Streams:
Pan & Zoom Map
Geographical and 3D Streams:
Pan & Zoom Map

Panel Development Process

To develop panels, you first need to be sure that you have the right data. If you are using s-Dashboard with StreamLab, this means moving back and forth between dashboards and StreamLab. If you are using s-Dashboard directly with s-Server, this may involve creating new views on the data in s-Server (or having a SQL developer create such views). Once you get the right data flowing into your panel, you may also want to adjust how that data flows (in terms of how many rows appear at once, for example). Finally, you can customize the appearance of the panel itself.

  • Getting the Right Data Available
  • Making Sure Your Data Suits the Visualization
  • Adjusting the Panel's Input
  • Customizing Your Panel's Appearance

Getting the Right Data Available

The first step is to make sure that s-Server has the stream, view, or table that you want to display, and that this object has the right data. For example, most panels require numerical data, and if your stream, view, or table doesn't have numerical data, you will not be able to use s-Dashboard's graphic visualizations (though you can still display this data in a table).

To confirm that your stream, view, or table has the right data, open s-Dashboard and use the Select Input dialog to open the stream, view, or table:

Making Sure Data Suits Your Visualization

If you open a visualization, though, you may find that the data doesn't suit your visualization:

<img src="/images/sd/sd_ov_data_in_panels_wrong.png" width="100%"/> 

"loginFailureCount" and "amount" seem right for a dials display, but not "accountNumber" or "lat" or "lon". (On the other hand, these values might be just fine for a Geographical Stream panel.) One solution is to create a new view in s-Server with only the two desired columns, as in the screen shot below. (You may need to work with a SQL programmer to create this view.)

<img src="/images/sd/sd_ov_data_in_panels_right.png" width="100%"/> 

You can learn more about views in the CREATE VIEW topic of the SQLstream Streaming SQL Reference Guide.

Basically, though, views are reusable SELECTs on a stream. The view depicted above looks something like this in SQL:

create or replace view "MOCHI"."SuspectDebitOverview" as SELECT STREAM "amount", "loginFailureCount" from "MOCHI"."SuspectDebits";