Database Reference
In-Depth Information
Ease of Development
rEPorTING TooL
PrEDEFINED CHArT TyPE
EASE oF DEVELoPMENT
Excel
Yes
PerformancePoint
No
Power View
No
Reporting Services
Yes
Silverlight/HTML5
N/A
CoNDITIoNAL ForMATTING
Conditional formatting is very similar to the data bars in an application—it is
used to show the relationship of the value in a particular cell to the value in
other cells by including a visualization in that cell. The value is denoted by
the color in the cell. An oft-applied example in the accountancy world is red
for losses and black for gains, leading to the phrases “in the black” and “in the
red.” Another use is to quickly show relative values by shading them along a
color line—often green to red or blue to red—differing shades denote differ-
ent values, in a similar way to a heat map.
In Figure 15-7, you can see the unemployment rates, with higher numbers
shown in red:
FI g u R e 15 -7
Conditonal formatting on a pivot table
Care in the choice of colors needs to be exercised, however. In the example in
Figure 15-7, red for high unemployment and green for low unemployment are
apt; in other examples, the assumption of red for bad, as people are wont to
do, can be misleading. In Figure 15-8, red has been used for low population,
yet China and India are definitely countries with worse population problems.
Reversing the scale doesn't help because South Africa has a higher density
population than Russia.
