Charting: scatter plot with collapsed groups?

kevinroll

BIRT v2.5.0.v20090607.

We are attempting to make a scatter plot where the data for the X-axis is grouped but not aggregated. For example, our data looks like this (where the axes are surgeon and OR time):

Surgeon A - 100
Surgeon A - 145
Surgeon B - 200
Surgeon B - 215
Surgeon C - 175

...and there are many values. The attached picture shows how the client desires the chart to appear. All of the data points are condensed into a single line for that surgeon. The problem we are having is that when a group is selected on the X-axis/Category in BIRT (we've flipped the axis so that our output matches the specification) it also wants to perform an aggregation, combining all of our points into one. This is not what we want. We also tried grouping on the Y axis, which does at least put all of the relevant points adjacent to each other, but we still can't get them to merge into one line. There are hints that setting the interval to zero may combine them, but this does not work - BIRT will not take the setting and resets it to 1 each time. Is there a way to achieve this type of plot?

We're also a bit puzzled about how to draw the 80 percentile line. I have some ideas about creating a second data set with the percentile values but any hints here would also be appreciated.

Thanks!

kevinroll

After further experimentation and consideration, it seems to me that BIRT behaves very inconsistently on this issue. If I use a numeric value for the category, the values all appear in a line as I expect. However, if the category value is a string, each data point appears at a separate place on the axis. I would think that, at least for a scatter plot, identical category values should be plotted at the same location...