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Plot negative values in PIE Chart in OBIEE 12C
Dear GURUS,
I have a requirement where I need to plot some negative values in PIE Chart.
Environment Details:
OBIEE 12.2.1.3 on Oracle DB
When I am creating a pie chart, the graph where negative values are coming, it is displaying some message as below screenshot:
Please suggest me what can be done to plot the negative graph.
NOTE: I found the below link on ORACLE, but this one is applicable on 11g only:
Many Thanks in Advance.
Answers
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Think about it: Plotting negatives in a pie-chart makes no sense whatsoever.
What is your business requirement, what insight do you need to create? I doubt using a pie-chart will give you that insight (in fact pie-charts are rarely the best visualization for anything IMHO)
Please share with us what you are trying to achieve so we can give solid advice.
To answer the original question: If you have ONLY negative values you could create a pie-chart from the absolute values.
Otherwise: Not possible
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Dear MARTIN,
Thanks for replying back...
I am trying to achieve the functionality similar to EXCEL, where the negative PIE chart is plotted using the Absolute value.
Our users are currently using EXCEL for plotting the Pie charts, which is a mix of positive and negative values.
The model is something like above:
1 PIE Chart showing the percentage of various components of Expenditure (Bigger Pie)
2 Small Pie charts showing the bigger components break-down in terms of smaller components.
It can be seen from the above that the value are a mix of both positive and negative numbers.
Also, I can plot the Pie using Absolute values, but what to do to show the actual values on the graph as a display (I cannot show -58.1% as 58.1% when users roll-over on the pie).
I do agree that Pie is not a good option, but when we are dealing with various expenses, it is considered as one of the options.
I hope this answers your questions.
Please suggest.
Regards,
Sonkar
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See, that is what happens if you try to mix negative numbers with positive numbers, it will return very weird results (158.1 % ???). The information from the pie-chart is very confusing and hard to understand.
As I said negatives in a pie-chart are NOT possible.
Try a bar chart instead, that will allow you to plot negatives as well. read this post among many others that explains why pie-charts are usually a bad Idea: https://medium.com/geckoboard-under-the-hood/think-before-you-pie-chart-and-more-effective-ways-to-visualize-your-data-8…
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Hello Martin,
I have updated my users that negative Pies are not possible, but, came across some Oracle link (in the original post) saying this is possible. I just wanted to understand if that is possible (though it doesn't make any sense to me)... ?
Also, just a quick check from unrelated topic... Can I do Conditional Formatting on GRAND Total in a Pivot... ?
Condition is like: Sales < 90K -- RED, >90K and <95K -- YELLOW, >=95K -- GREEN
Can we do this?
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Well, as you can read in the same post that issue was fixed. It's not possible, really, I don't know what else to say.
Please create a new post for the other question so other people may benefit from it as well.
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Thanks Martin for all your support.
Really appreciate your views for PIE Charts...
As you said, it was fixed using some patches in 11G, however, I am using 12C and yet I cannot see a fix of this previous version's issue.
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I think @Martin van Donselaar has given you all the information you need. You can‘t plot negative values in a pie chart. You’ll need to use another type of Visualisation.
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ahhhh ok.. I think I understand...the 'feature' that you would like to have is actually the issue.
The fix was to STOP negative values to be included in percent calculations, not the other way around ;-)
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You might want to add a piece of logic into your analysis for Positive / Negative and change your numbers to absolute (strip the minus from the negatives).
Then have two pie charts, both of which will come to 100%, one for positive numbers, one for negative.
i.e. A = 25, B=25, C=-75, D = -25, E = 50
Graph 1 Positives: A, 25%, B, 25%, E 50%
Graph 2 Negatives: C 75%, D -25%
This seems to make more sense to me.
I contrive the numbers as the combination of the two would come to 0, Reductio ad absurdum, which in your logic would yield what??
I have also seen suggested to use a radar graph, so you can differentiate the negative and positive slices, this is not your pie chart but a variant on that theme. I dislike the suggestion as it is adding apples to pears, but others may differ.
For a flavour of what I mean see=>
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/10180329/negative-values-in-pie-charts
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Hello Martin,
Thanks for clarifying that the issue is other way around. I was assuming the fix was to include negative values in Pie Chart...
Hello Robert,
Thanks a lot for the suggestion.
I would like to inform that I have to plot the graph on basis of 2 values only (smaller graphs in my original post).
Also, the problem comes when one of the values is more than 100%, like 158% and -58% in my case. In excel, the graph will be plotted using the absolute values of this case.
Even if I am trying to plot the graph using absolute values, I cannot present the actual values on the Pie Chart.
I have went through your suggested link and the idea is good, but am not sure how to implement the same in OBIEE.
(How to achieve Concentric Pie or Donut?) Please excuse as I have very limited knowledge about scripting...
Thanks,
Sonkar
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