Book Image

Google Visualization API Essentials

By : Traci Lynn Ruthkoski
Book Image

Google Visualization API Essentials

By: Traci Lynn Ruthkoski

Overview of this book

There's a lot of data in our world, and visual representations are often the best method of making sense of it all. Yet, it should not take an army of programmers and analysts to create visualizations in order to make data useful. The Google Visualization API is accessible to novice and advanced programmers alike, making data useful to more people."Google Visualization API Essentials" will show you how to create interactive data displays with very little code. The API, combined with Google Spreadsheets and Fusion Tables, is a complete system, from data management to analytical displays. Not only is it simple to learn, but the Google Visualization API can also be viewed as a first step to learning additional Google APIs."Google Visualization API Essentials" uses both methodology overviews and hands-on examples with real data to introduce chart and graph creation on the Google platform. Topics are presented from various aspects, including Google Spreadsheets and Fusion Tables, and Graphic User Interfaces. An overview of the various API development environments available to developers is also covered. Basic and advanced charts, data source connectivity, style formatting, and publishing options are also explored in depth."Google Visualization API Essentials" brings the arsenal of Google Visualizations into the web developer toolkit.
Table of Contents (16 chapters)

Maps


For any data that can be tied to a geographic location, map visualizations are often very desirable. However, unlike simple bar graphs and line charts, it would be very difficult to redraw entire geographic regions of the world every time a visualization were needed. So, it would seem a basic template of geographic regions at varying scope would be helpful for developers. Rather than requiring all map visualizations to be created with the Google Maps API, the Visualization API provides several basic geographic data maps. These basic charts are the geochart and geomap visualizations. Both geomap and geochart are methods of representing intensity or quantity across geographical spaces, from provinces or states to worldwide.

geochart versus geomap

The only key difference between geomap and geochart visualizations is the method used to render the actual drawing of the map. Any other differences stem from the difference in rendering techniques. geomap uses Adobe Flash, which is quick to...