DC.js - Introduction

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DC.js is an excellent JavaScript library for data analysis in the browser, mobile devices and ultimately helps in creating data visualization. Data visualization is the presentation of data in a pictorial or graphical format. The primary goal of data visualization is to communicate information clearly and efficiently via statistical graphics, plots and information graphics. Data visualizations can be developed and integrated in regular web and even mobile applications using different JavaScript frameworks.

What is DC.js?

DC.js is a charting library for exploring large multi-dimensional datasets. It relies on the D3.js engine to render charts in a CSS-friendly SVG format. It allows complex data visualization to be rendered and has a designed dashboard having Bar Charts, Scatter Plots, Heat Maps, etc. DC.js is built to work with Crossfilter for data manipulation. DC.js enables a single (large) dataset to be visualized with many interconnected charts with an advanced auto-filtering option.

Why Do We Need DC.js?

In general, data visualization is quite a complex process and carrying it out on the client side requires extra skill. DC.js enables us to create almost any kind of complex data visualization using a simpler programming model. It is an open source, extremely easy to pick up JavaScript library, which allows us to implement neat custom visualizations in a very short time.

DC.js charts are data driven and very reactive. In addition, it delivers instant feedback to user interaction using the Crossfilter Library.

DC.js Features

DC.js is one of the best data visualization framework and it can be used to generate simple as well as complex visualizations. Some of the salient features are listed below −

  • Extremely flexible.
  • Easy to use.
  • Fast rendering of the charts.
  • Supports large multi-dimensional datasets.
  • Open source JavaScript library.

Dc.js Benefits

DC.js is an open source project and it requires lesser code when compared to others. It comes with the following benefits −

  • Great data visualization.
  • Performs graphical filtering.
  • Fast creation of charts and dashboards.
  • Creation of highly interactive dashboards.

In the next chapter, we will understand how to install D3.js on our system.

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