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Closed 11 years ago.
We are looking for a reporting suite that will allow us to analyse our data. I'm not sure of the exact terminology for such suites but they are often known as 'Dashboard Software' or 'Database Reporting'
An example is: Wonder Graphs
We are looking for a suite that will integrate with our MySQL database and provide us with:
'Live' graphical Interfaces (Graphs, Charts) for viewing our data which are automatically updated
The ability to 'Drill Down' using these charts to see more specific information.
For example if a chart shows total sales, we want to be able to click on that graph and be shown information on type of sales.
The ability to export to excel
An easy-to-use user interface that allows non-technical users to create and customise their own views or dashboards.
If anyone can list software they use, have used, or know to be good that would be a great help.
If there is an open-source example available that is great however we are expecting to pay for such software.
Let me know if I have been to vague on details.
Thanks in advance,
James
There are a few things to consider. Firstly, how much data do you have? MySQL isn't designed to be an analytics database. If you have a "small amount" of data, then it doesn't matter. However, if you grow or plan to grow, you may want to copy the data over to an analytic database such as Infobright. Infobright does have an open-source option.
On top of the database, you have a few open-source BI solutions that will work very well. Take a look at Pentaho, Jaspersoft, and Actuate/BIRT. Actuate has some great drill down options, and they also have a way to easily get this data to a mobile device.
Full disclosure: I am the open-source guy for Infobright.
In my research I discovered the following site which seems to be a good place to start for anyone looking at this topic:
Dashboard Insight
This site includes a long list of available suites and tools.
We're currently using Dundas Dashboard and have had a lot of success with it. I am pretty sure it has a data source connector for mySQL, you just have to install a driver that they have available on their site.
All in all, great product, a little bit of a learning curve, but we've had a lot of success with it.
Related
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Closed 9 years ago.
In most projects, reporting tools such as crystal reports are choosed to display data. There are many reporting tools we can choose. Perhaps some of them is easy to use, but most of them are a little complex.
Developers have to spend some time to learn how to use it, how to make it looks good. Sometimes, it makes develpoer fatigued to trim the table cell or make the cells orderliness. In some complicated situation, we need some style that the reporting tools don't afford. Using the reporting tools means lower the efficiency of development, developers have to build a lot of data schemas to adapt to the data source of reporting tools.
And the performance is also the short of reporting tools. Usually we need install some component to support the reporting. And if we need get some data from multiple joined tables, the performance loss is obvious.
So in my opinion, we can use the html table instead of the reporting tools.
some reasons:
HTML table is easy to be generated.
We can control the style of the table with the css easily.
HTML table is flexiable to embed jquery plug and flash object.
HTML doesn't need the component.
and so on.
As my experience, to finish a report, it takes me less time with HTML.
So why most projects still choose reporting tools?
Because reporting tools have more features than HTML tables
agreed, in C# i use datagrid insted of making a report, but report is easier when it come to print-pages and bills, but its not esy to remember how to do things like functions its a headach
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Closed 10 years ago.
Which book is best to learn SSIS. Actually in my project we need to take onput from CVS file and after processing the data in SQL server 2008 we have export it back to excel file. ASP.NET is used as UI for this.
Thanks,
Nabin
I completely agree with Cade in terms of simply working with it. I found that trying to follow specific "tutorials" to try and learn the package didn't really help but having a number of useful resources definitely came in handy.
At work, we had this book kicking around but really it just went over the flow objects available without going into any real-world examples. Jamie Thomson's blogs (here and here) are both excellent online resources though and have been really helpful for me personally.
Try this book:
http://www.amazon.com/Professional-Microsoft-Integration-Services-Programmer/dp/0470247959
The best way to learn SSIS is just to do it. Probably best to start and then refer to the book. Because the tool is so GUI intensive, I tended to get more after reading the book later once I was already familiar with the environment somewhat.
Reading the material some times couldn't solve your real time migration by missing some perticular functionality related to your project. I worked on your scenario case of migrating database to SQL using intermediate CSV or text files.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd537533(SQL.100).aspx
we migrated nearly 1TB in 30 min using SSIS 2008.
this could help to get the information on specific properties of souce file according to our requirements.
thanks
prav
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Closed 10 years ago.
When do you feel that it's appropriate/necessary to take deeper dives into the source code of open source tools to gain an understanding of the toolsets that you use? (nHibernate, StructureMap, Rhino Mocks, etc.)
When it doesn't work the way I expect or I need to implement something that isn't described very well in the documentation or with examples. Usually, it's a response to doing something that I think should work, but not understanding why it doesn't. FWIW, this also applies whenever I can access the source code, regardless of how "open" it is.
I would say there are two scenarios for that:
When the OpenSource product is part of your core business (your company depends on it).
When you want to start contributing to it.
I start diving into the source code anytime I need to know: what does this do? Or why does this not work how I think it should. This comes usually after reading documentation, googling, etc.
Also if it's a framework I've used for a while - it's in my best interest to know the source code a little bit as a reference point to know how it works.
If you want to know how any framework works, you always have to start with: "What would this IoC/ORM framework have to do in order to perform this function." I find thinking from the inside out helps sometimes with frameworks.
You may need to do this if the toolset you are using does not provide functionality that you need, or if there are bugs in your tools.
For example, recently I was using a JavaScript grid library that did not support sorting a column by certain date/time formats - so I had to go into their code and understand how it works so I could come up with a workaround. In the end I had to implement this myself, and contributed the code back to their project.
I think in general, if you are doing something that requires deep diving, then you are probably doing something you shouldn't be doing. When you need to know things at a level where you aren't doing standard things, you need to think really carefully about whether you are doing the right thing or not.
The exception to this is when you are building something where the library is in the realm of your company's core competency. If you are building an online build system, you probably want to know way too much about the underlying build systems (Maven or whatever), and you should probably deep dive on those until you know them well.
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Closed 10 years ago.
I would like to set up a premium subscription service for a PHP/MySQL based site. The site is Wordpress based, but highly customized and I'm not looking for a plugin solution necessarily. To oversimplify, I need to query the signed in user's subscription level (paid or free) and tailor the content that gets presented accordingly.
I'm looking for suggestions on how to implement the back end for billing/payments. I know one option is to use the paypal API, but I was wondering whether there are alternatives that I should also be considering. One thing I have noticed with many sites using paypal is that the experience is quite disjointed in the way one gets passed from the original site to the paypal site and back again. Is this just the way these sites have implemented the integration or are there better options than paypal from a UX point of view?
Also...
Have you used any tools / libraries / services that made this easier?
Do you have any advice on this topic in general? Gotchas, pointers, etc.
Finally, we're not a large corporation (yet), so a solution that could scale with us would be ideal.
UPDATE: After learning an enormous amount about the different options, we decided to use Braintree. Deciding factors were:
We could easily get full PCI
compliance and still control the
user experience completely with
their transparent redirect
They guarantee portability of your
customer data from their vault (very
few vendors do this)
They remove
the need to set up your own payment
gateway and merchant account
I wrote a detailed review here: http://expletiveinserted.com/2011/03/18/comparing-recurring-payment-solutions/
I also put the cost comparison list for our shortlist of solutions here: http://expletiveinserted.com/recurring-payment-cost-calculator/
Every payment gateway is different, and whichever one you decide to go with will provide complete instructions on how to integrate with the various features they offer.
PayPal is of course the only one that is not regulated by any governmental body, and coincidentally enough, the only one that makes their money by robbing people blind. Shouldn't be too hard to find thousands of horror stories if you look.
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Closed 10 years ago.
I am looking for something that will allow me to put a photo gallery onto my website. I would also like to let someone else be able to easily add/remove pictures.
It would be nice, though not required, to work with a photo sharing website (like Flickr).
http://gallery.menalto.com/
Personally, I use Coppermine Photo Gallery which is PHP-based. It requires a database (I'm using MySQL) but there are other alternatives which use flat file based data sources.
Coppermine allows users to create accounts, upload their own photos and comment and vote on photos. There is a bunch of advanced features which I haven't dug into as yet. The main website has a complete list of functionality.
Obviously there are also other options for ASP.net solutions also. What web server are you hosting on?
Coppermine's Requirements are:
Any webserver, Apache recommended (Coppermine has been reported to work with Apache, Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS), Roxen WebServer, Abyss, JanaServer)
PHP 4.2.0 or better
GD lib or Image Magick
mySQL 3.23.23 or better (4.x recommended). Don't confuse the client api version (which is shown in phpinfo) with the mySQL version!
Oh plus, Coppermine is free software and is being released under the GNU GPL license.
[ http://coppermine-gallery.net/ ]
CoolIris has XML/Flickr support with a "Vido wall" style Flash component.
No add/remove functionality though, depends on other code to do that. Maybe use this as well as someone else's suggestion?
http://developer.cooliris.com/?p=embed
Can I add xFlow! to this illustrious list?
http://xflow.pwhitrow.com
xFlow! is a gallery application that has been built to answer the internet's demand for a fully functional Coverflow style gallery.
Written in PHP and Javascript, it's a breeze to setup and administer, and boasts a wealth of features, including support for Flickr and YouTube.