Graphing a single row in an SSRS Line Graph

Question

I have a table setup with the following columns:

Product Name
SalesMonth1
SalesMonth2
SalesMonth3
SalesMonth4
SalesMonth5

An example of a row is as follows:

Bread
300
600
800
900
1000

I am trying to put this into a line graph in SSRS but am having trouble figuring out which fields go where. In my dataset, I have a field for each "SalesMonth" column. So in my dataset, I have 6 fields total including the product name. Will this work? On which axis should the product name go and the sales fields go?

Answer 1

I hope your dataset uses SQL.

I would "unpivot" the data by writing a 5-part UNION SELECT, e.g.

SELECT Product_Name , 1 AS Month , SalesMonth1 AS Sales UNION ALL SELECT Product_Name , 2 AS Month , SalesMonth2 AS Sales UNION ALL ... SELECT Product_Name , 5 AS Month , SalesMonth5 AS Sales

Then in the SSRS Chart definition:

Month = Category Group

Product Name = Series Group

Sales = Values

But the real real answer is that your data is probably not in a useful shape for reporting. Will there only ever be 5 months? I suspect not...