Creating a chart with Bluemix Embedded Reporting

Question

Using IBM Bluemix I created an app, a Cloudant NoSQL DB, a dashDB and an Embeddable Reporting service. In dashDB I created a table with a couple of columns and some simple data. Next I configured the Embeddable Reporting service and pointed it to the Cloudant DB for its own storage and dashDB for reporting data. Next I open Report Studio and create a chart mapping in some data:

When I play the report page, I get an indication that I have not supplied data:

However if I create a different report and ask for a List ...

The list appears just fine ...

I am at a loss to understand why my chart will not appear but my list will. I will be happy to amend and update my question with any relevant information anyone may need.

Answer 1

Imagine a vertical column chart. Now imagine data of the form:

Dallas 10 New York 30 San Francisco 50

We can easily imagine the cities on the X-Axis and the values on the Y-Axis. This is easy enough. But now imagine that our X-Axis rows in our data are not unique ... for example:

West-Region 10 East-Region 30 West-Region 20

What then should the "value" of the West-Region column be? The column names should be unique and hence we can't have two columns with the same name. Should the value of the West-Region be 30 (the sum) or 15 (the average) or something else?

And that is where the problem comes in. When we define a column in a chart, there is no defined Aggregate Function. What we need to do is define how we want values to be aggregated together. If we select the column and select its properties, we can find an Aggregate Function option. We can choose a function such as Average.

Once defined, the chart will show up correctly because it can now properly handle aggregation. Now, this might seem strange especially if we know for certain that there is never a need for aggregation because values are unique ... but apparently, these are the rules (for better or worse) and, once set, charts now show: