The JViews Charts SDK provides all of the services that the product offers, including those of the Designer. (In fact, the Designer was written with this underlying SDK.) Developers use the Designer to parameterize the chart views, the data model, and the interaction capabilities without coding, using point-and-click interaction. However, the SDK APIs provide a programmatic way to accomplish all of this and more (including printing and thin-client deployment, which is not covered by the Designer).

Developers can choose to ignore the rapid development environment of the Designer and begin coding directly with the SDK, although this is not the recommended development path. In any case, for all but the simplest applications, developers need to be familiar with the SDK and code with it.