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No, Graphviz has a different feature-set. If I need to make a 'graph' in the mathematical or computer science, then it's the way to go. If I need to make plots, it doesn't do it. Frankly, I'd use JFreeChart since right now I'm doing a Java project; I've also used it for web apps. See the project at Google Chart API.

For a cool example, open a new browser tab and put in: "http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?cht=p3&chd=t:60,40&chs=250x100&chl=Hello|World"

I do most of my work in Perl, and the lack of a good chart package has been annoying for a very long time. GD::Graph will give you very basic (and not terribly ugly) line and bar charts relatively quickly, but that's about it; it's missing even rudimentary features that make it less than useful (eg error bars).

There just isn't a general purpose charting package for Perl that would even come close to JFreeChart. Grace can produce some nice results, but the Perl interface to it is just a wrapper around their terrible command line interface (maybe it's improved in the last few years, but when I tried it it was almost entirely undocumented and nigh-unusable).

So, if you want publication quality charts you basically still have to learn gnuplot, which is great, but sometimes just a little too involved.

At least this thread gives a nice summary of what the other languages have to offer: the PHP and Ruby packages aren't faring any better, but Python's matplotlib looks freaking beautiful.

Pentaho, the Open Source Business Intelligence Suite is a very prominent example of this new approach on development. It consists of well-known projects like JFreeReport, JFreeChart, Jasper, Kettle, Mondrian and others.

What the Pentaho guys do beyond marketing is writing glue code and user-friendly development tools. They also usually hire the project owners after incorporating a new project.

Pentaho, the Open Source Business Intelligence Suite is a very prominent example of this new approach on development. It consists of well-known projects like JFreeReport, JFreeChart, Jasper, Kettle, Mondrian and others.

What the Pentaho guys do beyond marketing is writing glue code and user-friendly development tools. They also usually hire the project owners after incorporating a new project.

Pentaho, the Open Source Business Intelligence Suite is a very prominent example of this new approach on development. It consists of well-known projects like JFreeReport, JFreeChart, Jasper, Kettle, Mondrian and others.

What the Pentaho guys do beyond marketing is writing glue code and user-friendly development tools. They also usually hire the project owners after incorporating a new project.

If you are facile with Java, or your data is already in a javax.swing.table.TableModel, then I suggest JFreeChart.

We use JFreeChart which works fine for us. We have fairly simple data to graph (a line chart with messages per second, bar charts for top spam and virus recipients) for the analysis summary in an email scanning product.

I'm currently building a variety of petroleum engineering tools in Java. Here are the libraries I've found most useful:

JFreeChart - for all your plotting needs. Robust, quick, and fairly bug free. Not perfect, but hackable.

iText - a free Java PDF library. My preferred method for creating reports, especially since a lot of my output needs to be e-mailed or submitted to the government, not printed out.

JAMA - a Java Matrix package. The fact that this library has a working singular value decomposition has saved me bunches of time programming a boring and tricky algorithm. I guess it has other stuff, too.

For those who like doing things server-side.

JFreeChart is a good choice, and can output even in SVG.

And if you like Crystal Reports (TM) then Agata Report is nice.

iText is an open-source Java PDF library that works pretty well and is fairly simple to use.

Also, JFreeReport is an open-source Java reporting library that makes it easy to generate reports in various formats - PDF, HTML, CSV, Excel, plain text.

I've been playing with this open-source java charting library for a while now, and it's quite impressive. It can be easily integrated into applets or JSPs.