Re: The right tool for the job

From: Lee <Lee_at_Jamtoday.com>
Date: Thu, 25 Jun 2009 15:44:47 -0600
Message-ID: <h20r4f$4ii$1_at_reader1.panix.com>


Robert Klemme wrote:
> On 25.06.2009 18:34, Lee wrote:
>

>> But how do I get the graph? Export the data as csv and import into an 
>> Excel sheet? OK, that would work, but shouldnt there be a slicker way 
>> to fly?

>
> You can query the data directly from Excel via Oracle's ODBC driver. You
> can even make Excel update the data whenever the sheet is opened AFAIK.
>
D'oh! Of course I can. in the past, I had used OraExcel, but in those days it was a bit cheaper. Now they want about 160 euros for the latest version (I'd be paying in dollars, ouch!). OraExcel now called SQL*XL is very slick...it has a very nice user interface and is very easy to use, but I cant see plonking out all that change when all I need is one table's worth read into the Excel sheet so as to produce a standard graph.

On the other hand, that sort of expense hardly breaks the corporate bank. What would they (the corporate sponsors) budget for each day of developer time?

> Other than that there are also plotting packages around which can be
> used to generate graphs. For example, you can write a perl / ruby /
> phyton / your favorite scripting language with database support which
> extracts the data and prepares it for graphing.

>
> You can also write SVG easily as it's XML. Plenty of options...
>
That bears looking into as well. For a standard graph its probably going to be cheaper and easier to use Excel, but I suppose there's something to be said for delivery over the web. I suppose the client side browser needs some sort of special plug in to render the SVG?

Thanx. Received on Thu Jun 25 2009 - 23:44:47 CEST

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