Extend SAP Dashboard visualizations and capabilities with google charts integration

Back in January, i wrote about Google Charts, and how they stand to shake the BI and data visualization world. Well, over the past months, not only the charts collection has grown substantially and now includes many nontraditional charting options, like maps, and dynamic icons, google gwt now includes a data visualization library that can produce quite stunning results. But even with no programming skills, google charts url api continue to provide any web developers with a simple way to mashup and extend their application by integrating interesting chart images. SAP Dashboards (Xcelsius) can certainly benefit from this as well. Using the Slideshow component, which can render images located on the web, you can add new kinds of charts, dynamic icons, and even data driven maps to your dashboard. In this example, you can see maps, box charts, venn charts and QR codes generated via google charts and integrated via the slideshow component into an Xcelsius dashboard. Of course, any web based reporting tool, webi or crystal included, as well as obiee and many others, can benefit from this technique. You can find the xlf for this example here. If you found an interesting way to use google charts in your BI or data visualization project, please feel free to share.