FOSS Report Generation Tools

[Shlomi Fish]

Hi Eliyahu!

On Tuesday 17 Nov 2009 11:48:14 eliyahu cohen wrote:
> I'm looking for recommendations for FOSS tools that can easily be used to
>  create impressive looking charts, graphs and text clouds based on data in
>  a MySQL database. Eye candy is crucial for this project. Any ideas?
> 
> - Eliyahu
> 

Given some programming and while using such charting/graphing APIs, you can 
use such dynamic/agile/"scripting" programming languages such as Perl, Python 
or Ruby. Since Perl is my expertise, you can find many charting and graphing 
modules on http://search.cpan.org/ . I personally was very impressed from:

http://search.cpan.org/dist/SVG-TT-Graph/

It produces great results and they are SVG. You can use Inkscape to convert 
them to high-quality PNG (or a different format) from the command-line (or 
from within Perl). There are many other charting APIs on the CPAN, and 
naturally you can also try to use Spreadsheet programs such as 
OpenOffice.org's Calc, GNOME's gnumeric and KOffice.

<<<< Insert some useless and tangential rant about how Perl is unreadable, 
stupid, not recommended, hard-to-learn and the root of all evil. Yes, we got 
you - can we move on?. >>>>

Regards,

	Shlomi Fish

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Shlomi Fish       http://www.shlomifish.org/
Funny Anti-Terrorism Story - http://shlom.in/enemy

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