I have a table containing Multi-Series graphs, each containing measurement data and (upper and lower) tolerance limits.
The tolerance limits are defined at only a small number of points on the X-axis, and are the same for all graphs in the table.
The measurement data exist at a much finer resolution on the X-axis.
It would make my life very much easier if I could reference a separate data source for the two tolerance limits series, rather than having to interleave them with each set of measurement data.
Just a thought here - how about a DesignerFunction instance that does the job in your code? Something like GetToleranceLimit(<x-Value>, <upper-or-lower>)? That way, you wouldn’t have to really interleave the data within your measurement data but can do it in code quite easily.
Thanks for your reply. I’m using XmlDataProvider and generally trying to avoid report-specific code around the designer, but this certainly sounds like an interesting alternative. If I had the limits table somewhere in the XML, is there a nice way to access the data from the DesignerFunction via L&L functionality? Otherwise I could get it directly from the XmlDocument which I pass to the XmlDataProvider.
However, it has just occurred to me that I still have a problem. The tolerance curves must be shown exactly, but there is not always a measurement exactly at the X-axis values at which the tolerances change. With the DesignerFunction I would be able to get the tolerances corresponding to the X-axis value for a measurement, but not able to generate new X-axis values in order to show the tolerance “corners” precisely.
Regarding the original idea - I still think it would be nice to have, but I can imagine that it would not be easy to implement as it cuts across the concept of a single data source. The idea actually came from my primary user, the developer of the device to be tested, who said that Excel graphs allow something similar.
OK, I see, so you’d need a kind of double-interleaving. That indeed wouldn’t work with the designer function then. Bummer.
The request is perfectly fine although - as you said - it’s a bit difficult from the conceptual side. Probably the best way would be to have something like chart layers where you can put different charts “on top” of each other and those charts share their x- and y-axes (and do required interleaving automatically then).
Yes, that’s the way it is. I’ve got it working OK with the interleaved data at the moment, so there’s nothing urgent about this, it’s just a bit messy.
The idea of chart layers sounds very good. In that case I wouldn’t need Multi-Series. I can imagine that the next question would be: which chart properties should be common to all layers?
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It surely would 
… I’ve adapted the title of this suggestion to reflect our discussion. Thanks very much!