Server-side chart generation
WebCharts3D can be used with any JSP enabled server to produce interactive images in a number of different formats.
There are two ways in which an image can be generated on the server and presented to a user:
The following table summarizes the benefits and the drawbacks of these methods:
Indirect | Direct | |
Interactivity | The image map can be produced and embedded into the page together with the IMG tag. The image is linked to the image map via the image's unique ID. | The browser receives a byte stream and the image map cannot be integrated with the image. (Modern browsers do not support remote image maps). Only SWF and SVG formats can provide interactivity in this mode. |
Updating | In general, the entire page should be refreshed when the chart has to be changed. | The image can be changed without refreshing the page. The request URL can contain the hints on how to generate the new image. |
WebCharts3D provides convinient API to generate images both during page processing and image retrieval stages.