About maps and gadgets
BIRT Designer Professional supports the creation of maps and gadgets. Maps enable you to visualize geographic data. Gadgets are visualizations that measure a value in a visual range.
Maps are vector maps suitable for displaying data by geographical divisions, such as population distribution, electoral results, office locations, survey results, weather patterns, and real-estate sales. BIRT Designer Professional provides hundreds of maps, including maps of the world, continents, countries, European regions, USA states, and so on. Figure 18‑1 shows examples of maps.
Figure 18‑1 US map and Europe map
Like charts, measurement gadgets display data graphically and with animation. The difference between the two elements is that a gadget typically displays a single value whereas a chart plots multiple values for comparison. The supported gadgets, shown in Figure 18‑2, are meter, linear gauge, sparkline, cylinder, thermometer, and bullet.
Figure 18‑2 Measurement gadgets