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Drawing Graphs on Your Browser?
Pieroxy queries: "I recently had a look at various ways to draw a graph (lines, bar chart, pie chart...) for a web-based enterprise application. As we need some interactivity, the GIF image generated on the server-side is not an option. Here is the list of technologies I can think of: Flash is probably over kill and a closed technology. Java is very flexible but slow (to start and run). SVG (discussed here) still requires a plugin. VML is supported only on IE5+, but it is natively supported. Which one of these technologies is the more flexible and interactive? Is it reasonable to require a plugin from the end users of our enterprise application? Is IE5+ a wide enough target for an enterprise application?"
Internet Explorer 5 and above are very widely-used. However, they are still flawed browsers and, due to the announcement that these browsers will no longer be updated as standalone applications, many people may switch to another browser. Also, those using a Unix-based platform (read: GNU/Linux) no longer have any viable way of using Internet Explorer. If it is not easy to change back and forth, the already limited audience VML will reach even less as time goes on.
As an opinion only, if SVG is an option, it may be best in the long run. Assuming it is not easy to acrobatically jump from one option to the next (if that was possible, you could serve VML to IE 5.5+ and SVG to Mozilla, and some raster format for any other browsers), SVG holds the best promise. SVG is already supported as a plug-in (much like flash). It is about to be tested as a native part of the Mozilla browser. Over time, compatibility will actually improve--not something Java or VML can say easily. Also, as compatibility improves, simple scripting can make the charts interactive or real-time (or other neat fancy stuff).
I've recently had to do something very similar, well okay almost identical. Interactive graphs of various types and of various data sets from a Web Based interface.
:)
We have larges amounts of data which is very hard to interperate by a human in something like a spreadsheet. The only really feasable way to do it was graphs. Of course with the amount of data we had transmitting it to the client to do client side rendering (ie Java) is also out of the question.
In the end we settled on JPGraph with an interactive interface built using PHP. So a wizard style interface to choose the type of graph, what data to graph, how to group the data, and finally the outputted graph with the option to change all the settings.
With good indexed data making PHP generated graphs with JPGraph interactive is quite painless and very powerful.
Just one suggestion, make sure you have a way for people to save the settings of the graphs they make so they can pull em later, keeps the PHBs happy
I'm me. I think.
Corda might do what you need. It will output the images in Flash, JPG, PNG, GIF, SVG and others. I believe it uses XML files to generate the graphs. I'm sure I'm missing a lot of the other things that it can do, but it's worth taking a look. Oh, and unfortunately it's not free, but it might be worth it if it does what you need.
Note: I do not work for this company. I have seen the results of using their product. We use it where I work and everyone seems to like what it can do.