Topic: java charting software

[ober]

So I'm being tasked with our next release in creating an enhanced version of our graphical reporting in our ad-hoc reporting tool.  I'd like to use the Google Chart API but we might have an issue passing data to them.  Is anyone aware of a way to install the API locally?

We're using this right now: www.jfree.org/jfreechart and while it's ok, I'm not impressed with the finished product.  The graphics look cheezy when stacked against a google chart.

Does anyone have an experience here?  Keep in mind I'm going to be developing this in Java.

[hans]

If I recall, there was a package that mimics Google Charts, but you could run locally. It didn't look quite as nice but that was probably well over a year ago. We used it for a while when Google had restrictions on usage, then we just moved over to Google Charts.

It might have even been a PHP implementation though I forget. I'll try and dig it up again.

[hans]

Ah, I think it was http://www.jfree.org/eastwood/ (same folks that do jfreechart)

[ober]

I was just looking at that actually.  It appears the last updated was in 2008, but the last updated to jchartfree was early 2009, so they're about the same age.

[webwhy]

iirc the "interactive charts" of the google visualization api send no data to the server.  it's purely client side.  the static image charts are another story.

[ober]

Are you saying no data is sent to the server at any point with the visualization API?  That wasn't apparent when reviewing their site. 

Could I, in theory, run the visualization API on a local environment and create graphs of data?

[webwhy]

Checkout the documentation for the Interactive Area Chart.
http://code.google.com/apis/visualization/documentation/gallery/areachart.html

All of the Interactive Charts authored by Google have this "Data Policy" at the bottom of the docs.

All code and data are processed and rendered in the browser. No data is sent to any server.

The static image charts, which have data passed as parameters on urls are subject to the data logging policy:

Is Google logging all my chart data?
The chart data included in the HTTP request is saved in temporary logs for no longer than two weeks for internal testing and debugging purposes. Of course you should understand that if your chart appears in an image tag on a public webpage, it could be crawled.

stick to the interactive versions of the Google charts an you should be ok.

Could I, in theory, run the visualization API on a local environment and create graphs of data?

No idea.  I've never tried.  I've always loaded the libraries from google's CDN via (google.load), and I've never tried to load everything from my dev environment to know if it would work.

[ober]

Thanks... I think that's exactly what I need.