SQL data to fancy graphs

AHarvey

AHarvey

AHarvey

Soldato
Joined
6 Mar 2008
Posts
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Location
Stoke area
Hi all,

New job and they are using spreadsheets to track the movement of items we work on. They also use paper timesheets that then need scanning in etc.

I've suggested for a start we move to a web based SQL version. Employee's can enter tasks and times taken directly into it. We can enter item information in, then as staff work on them we can track how long each item took, who did it etc. Track the complete life of each item from in to out.

We'd also like clients to be able to log in to a customer area and be able to see updates on how many items we have, how many are in each area and how many have been completed. (It will also end up getting tied into invoicing and estimates and they want to move from manual entry, to automating it with NFC's but that is down the line)

I know HTML, ok with CSS and I can muddle through with PHP and SQL. I am pretty good with Python too. Question is, how can I take the info from the SQL dbase and present it in a professional looking way?

Are there any languages, frameworks etc that I should be looking at? Any books or online guides? anything on Lynda I can watch?
 
AHarvey said:
Hi all,

New job and they are using spreadsheets to track the movement of items we work on. They also use paper timesheets that then need scanning in etc.

I've suggested for a start we move to a web based SQL version. Employee's can enter tasks and times taken directly into it. We can enter item information in, then as staff work on them we can track how long each item took, who did it etc. Track the complete life of each item from in to out.

We'd also like clients to be able to log in to a customer area and be able to see updates on how many items we have, how many are in each area and how many have been completed. (It will also end up getting tied into invoicing and estimates and they want to move from manual entry, to automating it with NFC's but that is down the line)

I know HTML, ok with CSS and I can muddle through with PHP and SQL. I am pretty good with Python too. Question is, how can I take the info from the SQL dbase and present it in a professional looking way?

Are there any languages, frameworks etc that I should be looking at? Any books or online guides? anything on Lynda I can watch?
Click to expand...

BIRT and InetSoft style reports are ones that spring to mind. BIRT is free but there is a paid version with more features.
 
BiRT, Jasper reports are two I know of. Birt isn't bad - certainly better than the 15 year old version of crystal we were using previously. Can do pretty graphs etc. but not updated in realtime. would have to refresh pages to update (and watch out for the freemium iHub - I went for tomcat and their free viewer)
 
Qlikview is an option, more of a corporate solution to be fair but very powerful. Or just do your reporting in excel and connect to the server using ado.

Qlikview you publish the template onions server and the template can be viewed over the Internet or internally over the corporate intranet.
 
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It kind of depends I guess. if you are looking to custom build as it sounds like you are then there are a number of frameworks available for each element of what you want. Personally I use Telerik's Kendo suite and that is a really nice feature rich suite of controls and has brilliant graphing options. They also offer php specific version if you prefer that route rather than a pure html,CSS, JavaScript view. I guess it all depends on what you want to do. I.e. Just the reporting aspect then maybe looking at something like tableau, or power bi maybe an easy entry into providing these features, but if you are planning to do everything from capturing the data to presenting it in your graphs then you need to decide which technology stack you want to go with and then it may be easier to advise what frameworks may be suitable. (Personally as a .Net guy I stick with MS technologies mainly)
 
You mention PHP, are you looking at MySQL only or would you consider MSSQL? (I'm pretty sure) the free express version of MSSQL includes reporting services which you can use to build and deploy reports straight from SQL server. Reporting services runs its own webserver allowing people to login/browse/run reports. It might give you a quick way to get something set-up for internal people at least.

Have a watch of


:).
 
SSRS (post above) isn't half bad. Have had the odd ballache with the presentation of it (complicated groupings of data in a table, getting it to print to A4 without spilling over onto another page).

Can't speak for any other the others though .
 
Thanks for all the info and links, it'll take me a while to sort through it all and make a decision on what to try first but I hope it'll be smooth sailing after that :D
 
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