title: Can WPF render a line path with 300,000 points on it in a performance-sensitive environment?
body: <p>A simple XY line graph: The X axis will represent the complete range of possible rating percentages, from 0% on one end to 100% on the other. Specifically, the X value will represent our rating cut-off, or the minimum rating a transaction can have before it is no longer acceptable. The Y axis will show values from 0 to the total number of transactions that have come through. The Y value will represent the total number of transactions that have a rating greater than the current X value (or greater than or equal to the current X value, I haven't decided yet). No transactions will have come through when this graph is first drawn, so the graph will begin at "y=0x".</p>
  
  <p>Let's say the first transaction comes through, with a rating of 40%. The rating of the transaction indicates that this transaction is acceptable if our rating cut-off is less than 40%. (... or less than or equal to 40%. Again, I haven't decided yet).</p>
  
  <p>First, the Y axis will rescale to show the range of 0-1 (since 1 is the total number of transactions). Then the line will be modified to indicate that 0 transactions are acceptable from x=40 or more, and that 1 transaction is acceptable from x=40 or less. This is easy to accomplish in WPF by simply adding two points to the line path - one at (40,0) and the other at (40,1) - and then moving the line's left endpoint to (0,1). The line's right endpoint will remain at (100,0). This process can then be repeated for the second transaction, and so on.</p>
  
  <p>The problem is that we will be dealing with six-digit quantities of transactions. and I want to make sure I am using WPF's hardware accelerated vector drawing capabilities to their fullest extent to ensure the graph doesn’t lag or freeze the rest of the program as it tries to render 300,000 points onto a single line path. Or is WPF supposed to be able to handle numbers like that in a heartbeat? I need to find a way to implement this graph without slowing the application to a halt. I have faith that WPF's vector drawing platform will provide a solution, but I don't know enough about how to exploit WPF to be certain that I am getting the most out of WPF's high-performance rendering capabilities.</p>