APEX 4 (bug) - Axes in Charts

Consider this chart, it just shows the salary of the employees in a 3D Bar chart.

Now, if you want your chart to start with e.g. 500 instead of 0 you need to define the axis minimum value.

The wizard shows X Axis: Min, so lets put 500 as the value in... However running the chart again gives the same result.

This is in fact a known bug in APEX 4 (bug id 11700598), or you can read on it in this forum thread. Basically the Axes Settings should show the Y Axis Min instead of the X Axis.

The workaround is to change your chart type to 3D Column (instead of 3D Bar Chart).

Running the page gives us this result, so yes it's different, but for this chart the wizard is correct. Later you can change the chart type again and it should be ok.

So again we want the Y Axis to start with 500 instead of 0, so we define the Y Axis: Min in the Axes Settings. (see that now Y Axis: Min is listed and not X Axis: Min)

Run the page again and the chart will start from 500 instead of 0.

So now you can change the type back to 3D Bar Chart and you see it applied the start value correctly (the axis start now from 500).

My recommendation to the APEX Development team would be that either we see both X and Y Axis min and max or add a dynamic action to the drop down list of the chart type to dynamically show the appropriate axis. (next to fixing the bug)

!! But there is even a nastier bug related to the above...

Let's say we kept the 3D Column chart type but added a scrollbar for the X-Axis.

Running the page shows us this! The chart is only partially visible.

This is related to the previous bug... as we defined a value of the X-Axis Min when the chart type was still 3D Bar Chart, APEX still keeps that into account... (that is why the workaround worked before). However in this case it has a negative impact on the way the chart is shown.

The way to correct the issue is, change the Chart Type back to 3D Bar Chart, delete the value that is in X-Axis Min, hit the Apply Changes button, edit the chart again and change the Chart Type back to 3D Column.

Running the page again shows the correct chart.

(Found in APEX 4.0.2.00.07).