Charts have an importance equal, if not major, than reports. They are the first impression of our entire work: an appealing and clearly understandable image can engage the user and transmit a concept much faster than a grid. So, it is very important that, besides having done our homework and verified all the numbers, we create a simple yet effective graphical way of transmitting the information and getting the attention of the reader.

Creating graphs is not easy, at least for me, and sometimes it takes more time than the underlying report itself. But satisfaction is worth the effort: we will see how to modify some of the most common properties and settings in order to paint attractive masterpieces of data imagery.

This chapter is intended as an overview. Of course it's not possible to touch every single type of graph, and I recommend you to read Chapter 9 of the Advanced Reporting guide in the product documentation, for more details.

Another thing I'd like to mention before we continue is that the graphic generation engine inside MicroStrategy is, in fact, an external library licensed from Three D Graphics, Inc.