several questions regarding graphs

[Zlatko Matiæ]

Hello.

I use MS Graphs nested in reports, extensively. They show subset of report's
recordset by linking master/child fields. While reports are based on
pass-through queries (PostgreSQL), my graphs are based on local tables which
content is refreshed from pass-through queries. The reason for that is
because I determined that it is 20 times faster than to base graphs directly
on pass-through queries.
In order to avoid known problem with synchronizing graph with report, when
graph doesn't represent values correctly, I have OnFormat event of a section
with nested graph, that requeries the graph.
My questions are following:

1. There are 5 master/child fields that are used to synchronize content of
graph to corresponding records in report: "department ", "plant",
"sampling_type" , "area" and "sample". They are normally not visible in
graph, because it's values are textual (both on server and in local tables
these fields are text/varchar type). Everything works OK as long as all
entered values in these fields are recognized as text. But, if a user enters
some number-like value for some of these textual fields (for example "12"
for "area"), MS Graph seems to recognize it as a number data type instead
of text data type, so it is shown in graph as a number, which is not OK,
because the actual value is a text and should not be represented in graph as
a number.
So, I was looking in MS Graph datasheet and there is an option for formating
field data type. I choosed "text" in all fields, but it didn't help, MS
Graph still shows all textual number-like values as numbers, although fields
in tables and in graph datasheet are declared to be text...How to solve it ?

2. How to force MSGraph to select subset from report's recordset, instead of
independent query for graph?

3. There are many reasons why I don't like MS graph control, so I'm
wondering is there any freeware or commercial alternative to MS Graph, that
could be nested in reports?

Thanks,

Zlatko