Re: Generating graphs and tables for admins - templates, frameworks, files or what?

[tmiklas]

Hi

I have tried different approaches and the one that worked best for me was simple web page with reports, dropdowns, etc - exactly as you said. To generate those I use scripts as big as needed, not bigger.

Examples:
#1 - For on-line radio show we run, I gather data with one script that appends lines to CSV, then another one (plain CGI) pulls that out and plots a graph using Chart::Lines. It's used several times a week so I can live with old plain CGI :-)
#2 - for our in-house cluster I wrote simple web management/reporting using Catalyst (also to finally learn Catalyst a bit and move away from using CGI everywhere), adding our own Model, TT for View and finally for plotting graphs I've used Google's Chart API, by simply generating URLs in Perl and inserting them into the template. Simple, yet very effective.
#3 - reporting system for our key corporate application (work in progress as we speak) will be done the same way, except maybe graphs will be generated internally, without 'leaking' data to Google (some of it may be too sensitive, even if they are just plain stats).

The only downside in using Google Chart API (with or without any Perl modules that are on CPAN) is that you have to have Internet access to see the graph, but IMHO it's much easier to maintain then - especially for non-developers (that's of course subjective). Templates are easy - you can define all in template, uncluding URLs for graphs and then only values come from Controler, all works well. One more - you have to be comfortable with google 'seeing' your data :-) I would say have a look at Google's Chart API - at least you have something more to choose from.

BTW - I may be totally wrong, please look for other advices, but the one above works well for me.