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How to Create an Inline Bar Chart

Table of Contents

What is an Inline Bar Chart

Inline Bar Charts are small horizontal bars displayed in data grid cells, with or without the actual data, according to the cell value.

There are two types of basic Inline Bars:

  1. Inline Full Bars – always starting from zero. For many large values, they may occupy too much real estate area and be very close to each other.
  2. Inline Relative Bars – starting from the min positive value or max negative value. Recommended if you want to compare the bar sizes to each other. A bit confusing when min values have no bars.

Steps to Create an Inline Bar Chart

Start Visual Xtractor or Data Xtractor. Connect to a database. Create or design a SQL query. Run the query and check the results.

  1. Display and enable the Inline Chart query builder.
  2. Set your numeric data column to either Inline Range Bars – Full Bar…
  3. Or set your numeric data column to Inline Range Bars – Relative Bar.

Full and Relative Bars Demo Query

Look for the ready-to-use Full and Relative Bars generated query under the Queries > Demo Queries > Inline Charts > Horizontal Bars folder. Click on the “add demo queries” command link, if not there.

Inline Full and Relative Bars Demo Query

Generated demo queries must work for any database, with no restriction. They use constant values generated on-the-fly and your database SQL engine, but do not depend on data from your tables, and never alter your database in any way.

Customize your Inline Bar Chart

  1. Show no text.
  2. Show plain colors, with no gradient background.
  3. Show as black-and-white, with no colors.
  4. Show as thin lollipop sticks.
  5. Hide the zero vertical axis, when alternate values.

Custom Inline Relative Bars

Conclusion

  • Creating Inline Full and Relative Bar Charts in Data Xtractor or Visual Xtractor is fast and trivial: set your numeric grid column as either Full Bar or Relative Bar, and that’s it.
  • For positive and negative values, the bars may go on both sides of the zero vertical axis, with different up and down colors.
  • Bars may also appear as thin lollipop sticks.
  • Most powerful builtin features of this chart type are common to other inline charts: hiding the text or colors, or the gradient background.
  • Switch to another builtin inline chart theme, or customize your own, for any possible color or other styles.