Creating reports with multiple axis charts

Often you will want to have multiple items plotted on a chart. In the previous recipe on charts in Chapter 2, Authoring Reports with SQL Server Data Tools, we plotted a single value over time.

For this recipe, we will plot two values over time, in this case, the Total Sales Amount (Excluding Tax) and the Total Tax Amount. As you might expect though, the tax amounts are going to be a small percentage of the sales amounts. By default, this would create a chart with a huge gap in the middle and a Y Axis that is quite large and difficult to pinpoint values on.

To prevent this, Reporting Services allows us to place a second Y Axis on our charts. With this recipe, we'll explore both adding a second line to our chart as well as having it plotted on a second Y-Axis.

Getting ready

First, since this is a new chapter, we'll create a new Reporting Services project to contain it. Name this new project Chapter03.

Within the new project, create a Shared Data Source...