Design Your First Dashboard
Topics in this section describe how to create a dashboard using the Dashboard Designer
The Dashboard Designer provides an intuitive UI that facilitates data binding and shaping, and layout design. Many of these normally complex tasks can be accomplished with a simple drag-and-drop operation, allowing you to start creating dashboards immediately.
Create a Dashboard
When you run an application containing the Dashboard Designer, it already contains an empty dashboard. To create a new dashboard, click the New button in the ribbon Home tab.
Provide Data
The topics in this section describe how to provide data to be visualized in the dashboard.
Supported Data Sources
The Dashboard Designer allows you to establish a connection to various data sources such as SQL databases, Microsoft Excel workbooks, XML/CSV data files or OLAP cubes.
The following data source types are supported:
SQL Data Source
To connect to various SQL databases, the Dashboard Designer requires corresponding providers to be installed on your machine. The table below lists the supported data sources and the required data providers.
SQL Data Source | Supported Versions | Provider |
| Microsoft SQL Server | 2005, 2008, 2008R2, 2012, 2014, 2016, 2005 Express Edition, 2008 R2 Express, 2012 Express, 2014 Express, 2016 Express, Azure SQL Database | .NET Framework Data Provider for SQL Server |
| Microsoft Access | 2000 or higher | Microsoft Jet OLE DB Provider / Microsoft Access Database Engine (ACE) |
| Microsoft SQL Server CE | 3.5, 4.0 | .NET Framework Data Provider for SQL Server Compact |
| Oracle Database | 9i or higher | Oracle Data Provider for .NET / .NET Framework Data Provider for Oracle |
| Amazon Redshift | n/a | .NET data provider for PostgreSQL |
| Google BigQuery | n/a | DevExpress.DataAccess.BigQuery ADO.NET provider |
| Teradata | 13.0 or higher | .NET Data Provider for Teradata |
| SAP Sybase Advantage | Advantage Database Server 9.1 or higher | Advantage .NET Data Provider |
| SAP Sybase ASE | Sybase Adaptive Server 12.0 or higher | SAP Sybase ASE Database Client |
| SAP SQL Anywhere | 11 or higher | SAP SQL Anywhere Database Client |
| IBM DB2 | 9.5 or higher | ADO.Net client from IBM |
| Firebird | 1.5 or higher, Dialect 3 | Firebird ADO.NET Data Provider |
| MySQL | 4.1 or higher | ADO.NET driver for MySQL |
| Pervasive PSQL | 9.x or higher | PSQL ADO.NET Data Provider |
| PostgreSQL | 7.x or higher | .NET data provider for PostgreSQL |
| VistaDB | 4, 5, 6 | VistaDB ADO.NET Provider |
| SQLite | 3.x | ADO.NET provider for SQLite |
| XML file | n/a | n/a |
Connecting to SQL Databases
The Dashboard Designer provides the capability to connect to multiple types of SQL databases using the Data Source wizard. This tutorial describes how to establish a connection to any supported database and select the required data.
To connect to an SQL database in the Dashboard Designer, follow the steps below.
Click the New Data Source button in the Data Source ribbon tab.
On the first page of the invoked Data Source Wizard dialog, select Database and click Next.
On the next page, select the required data provider and specify the required connection parameters.
For instance, if you selected the Microsoft SQL Server data provider, the following options should be specified.
Server name
Specify the name of the MS SQL server to which the connection should be established.
Authentication type
Specify the authentication mode of the MS SQL Server. You can choose whether to use Windows authentication or Server authentication.
User name
Specify the user name used to authenticate to the MS SQL server.
Password
Specify the password used to authenticate to the MS SQL server.
Database
Select the database that contains required data.
After you have specified the required connection parameters, click Next and specify how to select data from the database.
- Select the Query option and run the Query Builder by clicking the Run Query Builder… button. The Query Builder allows you to choose the required tables/columns visually and passes the resulting SQL query to the SQL String editor. Click Finish to create the data source.
Select the Stored Procedure option to select one of the stored procedures from the database.
Click Next.
On the final page, you can optionally add query parameters and preview data.
Click Finish to create the data source.