Overview of Conversion Rules

Traditional WebFOCUS chart syntax supports both BY and ACROSS sort phrases. Chart attribute syntax supports only BY sort phrases, so any ACROSS phrase in the request must be changed to BY. This does not affect the chart output in any way.

In addition, if the traditional chart request does not generate an HTML5 chart, you must change the chart output format to JSCHART. For example, suppose the request generates chart output as format PNG:

ON GRAPH PCHOLD FORMAT PNG

You must change the format to generate an HTML5 chart using the following syntax:

ON GRAPH PCHOLD FORMAT JSCHART

By default, multiple sort fields in a request generate multiple charts. With traditional WebFOCUS chart syntax, multiple charts can be combined using several WebFOCUS parameters to specify how to assign sort fields to chart components. The GRMERGE parameter can activate simple or advanced merging. With GRMERGE ON, one chart is generated. With GRMERGE ADVANCED, the following parameters are used to determine how many charts are generated:

• GRMULTIGRAPH, which specifies how many sort fields to use to create multiple graphs.
• GRLEGEND, which specifies how many sort fields to place on the graph legend.
• GRXAXIS, which specifies how many sort fields to display on the x-axis. A value greater than 1 generates nested x-axes, except in the case of a bubblemap based on latitude and longitude sort fields. You can control whether nested or concatenated x-axis labels are generated by specifying a concatenation symbol for the x-axis labels, as described in Axis Properties.

The number of sort fields in the request must be the same as the combined number of merge fields. A few chart types do not support merge parameters. With some chart types, a specific merge parameter may not be supported, and with some chart types GRLEGEND and GRXAXIS are interchangeable and are only needed to make the number of sort fields equal to the number of merge fields. These instances are described in the following sections.

Chart attribute syntax eliminates the need for merge parameters. Instead, additional sort fields in a request can be assigned to attribute categories that control how many charts are generated and how they are merged. These assignments are described in the following sections. For more information about chart attribute syntax, see WebFOCUS Chart Attribute Syntax.

Note: Some of the chart requests in this chapter generate more merge parameters than the WebFOCUS tools generate. For example, a request may set GRLEGEND to 2, when the tools only allow 1 GRLEGEND field. The purpose of this difference is to illustrate parameter conversions to chart attribute categories, not actual chart requests generated by the tools.