ASP.NET OLAP Chart is a web control to add Visual Analysis functionality to your ASP.NET applications. Unlike ASP.NET OLAP Grid, allows displaying business data in charts and graphs rather than in numbers right within the users web browsers. Works directly with a relational database or MS Analysis Services OLAP server. A built-in Silverlight-application allows perfect visualization on the client side not limited by HTML tags. 100% C# 2.0 managed code.
ASP.NET OLAP Grid exists in two versions that are shipped together: RIA OLAP Grid and HTML OLAP Grid. Though these versions have the same purpose and do not differ in the core functionality, they do differ in the technology they are built on and therefore in some points deriving from the particular technology. Still, the versions are interchangeable and can be used instead one another without any harm, so it's up to you what version you prefer. We recommend that you use RIA controls because it's built on Silverlight technology that has advanced visualization capabilities, and makes the application much more sensitive, interactive and looking more like a desktop applications.
HTML OLAP Grid is an ASP.NET control that renders OLAP data using DHTML tags. Though HTML version can be perfectly used, it is recommended to use the RIA OLAP Grid instead because its rendering is not tag-oriented, and so it's much more interactive for the end-user. Among the specific features of the HTML-rendered visualization there is the following:
Full AJAX support
All Grid operations (like drilling, sorting, pivoting, filtering, grouping) are performed in AJAX mode without any special AJAX library.
Usability
In addition to the flexible settings, the Grid has different popup menus that make it easy to access to the RadarCube numerous functions. The menus are truly context-dependent and have special options for each of the Grid cells, depending both on the cell type. Also you can easily customize any popup menu by using an appropriate event.
Time intelligence
One of the features available in OLAP Grid is Time Intelligence. If the current Cellset has one or several time dimensions, then additional option will be available in the popup menus to allow to compare measure values for different time periods or to display cumulative sum since the given date. Also you can define additional Time Intelligence types.
OLAP Grid's API
The RadarCube core has a detailed and well documented API, which allows you to perform any OLAP-slice modifications from within your application, obtain information about any Cube or Grid cell. You can create your own aggregation functions; define your own rules for calculating dimension members, define your own sorting and context filtering. We can surely say the RadarCube is the constructor you can use to create OLAP-reports of any complication.
Other Features