Overview of Creating Interactive Output for ActiveX

The SAS/GRAPH ActiveX Control provides user interactivity in Microsoft Office products in the Windows operating environment. Interactive features include the ability to change graph types (a bar chart to a pie chart, for example), display data tips at the point of the cursor, rotate and zoom, reassign variable roles, and modify axes, legends, colors, and text fonts.

For your Web users who have SAS installed locally, the control is run automatically when the HTML output file is displayed in Internet Explorer. For your Web users who do not have the SAS system installed locally, and who have not already installed the SAS/GRAPH ActiveX Control, you can configure your HTML output file to prompt them to install the control at display time, as described in Installing the SAS/GRAPH ActiveX Control.

You can enhance your ActiveX presentations by adding drill-down links (see Configuring Drill-Down Links with ACTIVEX ) and configuring interactive features (see Specifying Parameters and Attributes for Java and ActiveX).

In addition to HTML output, you can use the SAS/GRAPH ActiveX Control to display interactive graphs in Object Linked Embedded (OLE) documents, and in applications written in Visual Basic, C++, and JavaScript. You can also include them in Microsoft Office Products, such as Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. See Exporting Your Graphs to Microsoft Office Products.

The following table lists the procedures and statements that generate output that can be displayed in the SAS/GRAPH ActiveX Control.

Procedures and Statements That Generate Output for the SAS/GRAPH ActiveX Control

Procedure	Statements
GAREABAR	HBAR, VBAR
GBARLINE	BAR, PLOT
GCHART	BLOCK, HBAR, HBAR3D, VBAR, VBAR3D, PIE, PIE3D, DONUT
GCONTOUR	PLOT
GMAP	CHORO, BLOCK, PRISM (see note)
GPLOT	BUBBLE, BUBBLE2, PLOT, PLOT2
GRADAR	CHART
G3D	PLOT, SCATTER
GTILE	FLOW, TILE, TOGGLE

Note the following:

Using PROC GMAP to generate a highly detailed map might create a large HTML output file, which might cause problems on certain Web browsers. If this is the case, you can use PROC GREDUCE to remove some of the complexity and produce a more usable map.
The SAS/GRAPH ActiveX Control does not enable 8-bit gray scale images. If you use images for backgrounds or chart elements, make sure that they are 24-bit images.
The ACTIVEX device does not support character values on the response axis. When generating plots with the ACTIVEX device, at least one variable must be numeric. When a numeric value is specified for the category axis and a character variable is specified for the category axis, the axis values are swapped in order to place the numeric value on the category axis. If both values are character values, the plot is not generated.