If you have experience with Xcelsius, you may have faced some limitations when using the built in components. Fortunately with the SDK you can extend the capabilities of Xcelsius by developing new components.

Flex and the importance of sorting

As the basics of setting up a development environment are already covered quite well in the Everything Xcelsius SDK FAQ blog post, this post will focus on the source code of OrderBy as an example. The resulting component will address one of the general principals of good data visualization: sorting data.

Displaying raw data in random order or even in alphabetical order forces the user to do the sorting of values by him/herself. In most cases – other than a time series – the user will be interested in the order of items by value and in locating the highs and lows. Ordering should be one of the first steps in “converting raw data into easily accessible information”.

(more…)