Looking for improvements to performance or an alternative to SfChart with many charts drawn

[RR]

I'm looking for ways to reduce the load time and improve the performance of SfChart (or for alternative controls that trade features for performance). I'm working on a page that displays correlations between data tags, as in the attached image. Each chart has two scatter series (for included/excluded points) and two line series (for the ellipse and for a lasso-esque selection tool). The correlations between each data tag are shown, so we end up with n(n-1) / 2 charts being rendered. The charts have a minimum size so not all are displayed at once, but displays can reach up to 50 tags or more. The SfChart controls strangle the performance of the system, even with as few as 20 tags. 

I've read through the SfChart performance page but the suggestions did not apply. I also took a look at the SfSparkline charts but they do not support scatter plots. The charts are hosted in an ItemsControl that uses virtualization to improve performance, but the display still becomes so slow that it is nearly unusable as the display is scrolled and more charts are loaded. The memory consumption is also incredibly high. Other than hosting four series (two scatter, two line) and having basic interactivity such as mouse events for our lasso selection tool, most features can be sacrificed. 

It is important to be able to display so many charts in this format so users can quickly see and compare these correlations to look for outlying points, bad data, etc. We had a charting control that could handle this but we are migrating our software from Windows Forms to WPF and are looking to modernize. I would prefer to continue using SfChart but if there are other Syncfusion controls that perform better, I am open to alternatives. 

Attachment: correlations_83800bab.zip

[Muneesh Kumar G]

Hi Rosanne,  

  

Greetings from Syncfusion, we have analyzed your requirement and you can achieve this by using FastScatterBitmapSeries and FastLineBitmapSeries instead of normal ScatterSeries and LineSeries in SfChart as per the below code snippet.  

 

Code snippet 

                viewModel.GenerateData(); 

                FastScatterBitmapSeries scatterSeries2 = new FastScatterBitmapSeries(); 

                scatterSeries2.XBindingPath = "XValue"; 

                scatterSeries2.YBindingPath = "YValue2"; 

                scatterSeries2.ItemsSource = viewModel.Data; 

 

                viewModel.GenerateData(); 

                FastLineBitmapSeries lineBitmapSeries1 = new FastLineBitmapSeries(); 

                lineBitmapSeries1.XBindingPath = "XValue"; 

                lineBitmapSeries1.YBindingPath = "YValue3"; 

                lineBitmapSeries1.ItemsSource = viewModel.Data; 

 

                .. 

 

                chart.Series.Add(scatterSeries1); 

                chart.Series.Add(scatterSeries2); 

                chart.Series.Add(lineBitmapSeries1); 

                chart.Series.Add(lineBitmapSeries2); 

 

We have checked with 50 SfCharts in panel, it loads data quickly. We have prepared a sample based on this, please find the sample from the following location.  

 

Sample: http://www.syncfusion.com/downloads/support/forum/140483/ze/WPF_Sample-1301483640.zip 

 

Please refer below user documentation for more details about bitmap series.  

 

https://help.syncfusion.com/wpf/sfchart/series#fast-line-bitmap 

https://help.syncfusion.com/wpf/sfchart/series#fast-scatter 

 

Hope this helps.  

 

Thanks,  

Muneesh Kumar G.  

 

[RR]

Great! Changing to the Fast Bitmap Series produced a significant improvement for load time, performance, and memory consumption. Loading 800 charts now takes just a few seconds instead of several minutes. Thank you for your time.

[Muneesh Kumar G]

Hi Rosanne,   

 

Thanks for the update. 

  

We are glad to know that the given solution works. Please let us know if you need any further assistance. 

 

Regards, 

Muneesh Kumar G.