Visualforce charting allows custom charts to be embedded into any Visualforce page using standard components, only server-side code is required. A key difference from the standard charting functionality available in reports and dashboards is that the data is provided by the Visualforce page controller and can be derived from any number of sObjects, regardless of whether any relationships between the sObjects exist.
Note
Visualforce charts became Generally Available in the Winter '13 release of Salesforce. Prior to this, custom charts required use of a JavaScript framework, such as Dojo Charting or Google Charts.
In this chapter, we will create a number of Visualforce charts of increasing complexity, add a chart to a standard Salesforce record view page, and generate a number of charts on a single page, much like a standard Salesforce dashboard.