Hi, Does anyone know any good software to recommend a charting ActiveX controlexample have looked at ProessentialGraph from GigaSoft (www.gigasoft.com)or componentOneGraph (www.componentone.com)...if anyone as any hintsBasically trying to include it as a tool within an existing trading systemThanks in advanceEmmnauel

What language and what types of charts? Is it for a commerical or proprietary system? Since you are trying to add this functionality to a trading system I am assuming you want to start with the basics like P/L and Price and Volume for the day, week, etc and historical values. I have used StringRay's graph's in the past which aren't bad. Stringray is a division of RogueWave. You can use M$ Chart Control which is free. I have used other one also but never really found one I liked so I created my own. If you want to graph more advanced subjects I would just buy one of the high end financial charting tools and use that. It would be much easier.

I can recommend the ChartFX Client/Server Control from www.softwarefx.com. I've used it from VB and its object model is very easy to understand and work with (unlike MS Chart which has a horrible object model and looks primitive). Chart FX would be easy to integrate in your app. but it isn't free.Recently I've been experimenting with using Python graphics modules, wrapped-up as COM servers - very impressive and cheap! (I used the DISLIN extension for Python)

www.originlab.com

If you need only standard charting function (line, candle, bar), I think MS Chart control is good enough. I downloaded a charting control with source code, it has done all the burden of canvas and paint jobs. I can easily manuplate it into any kinds of charting function I want. Now I don't use other charting control. Although it still have a lot work to do if you want to plot a beautiful chart, you can have 100% control of how it displayed and it's free.Sorry I can't find the original files and the URL. If you need that, I can pack some source codes from my disk.

Thank you for pointing me to ChartFX.I have downloaded the trial version, and it looks great.However, I have encountered one performance problem with ChartFX.It is, it takes relatively long time to assign the label or legend to the x-axis.In one application that I am building, I want to display a 5 minute chart of Nikkei 225 Futures for 6 months.This means I have about 6000 points in my series, to assign 6,000 date/time values to the label of x-axis, ChartFX takes about 5 minutes.One way to get around this performance problem, is that I try to assign labels only to points that I am going to display the label. This solve the performance problem, but then I don't get the date/time display (together with the nikkei value) when my mouse is over any particular point on the series.Any suggestions?

I'm not sure what you mean by assigning the labels - from what I remember, the functionality whereby values are displayed when you move your mouse over the data points occurs by default. Can you show me the code or the sequence of method calls you are performing ? I'm really curious as to why the control should take 5 minutes to refresh - I've never had a similar problem !

I found yet another way around the problem.If I use the analytical graph that comes with the Financial extension, it has an built in capability to handle date/time values as values of the x-axis. In this case, the perofrmance problem is gone and I get the bonus of having a floating crosshair/pointer to tell me the value of my series as I scroll across the x-axis.

I would recommend Gigasoft proessentials - its the most comprehensive set of graphic tools I've come across, source code in C, VB and Delphi is supplied and you can use the wnole thing as shareware if you can live with the banner at the bottom. Try www.gigasoft.com and check out the demo.