The Quest for the Perfect Online Charting Tool
Tuesday, January 16th 2007 | Ismael Ghalimi
The recent release of the online charting tool Swivel is exciting news to many who want to chart some piece of data without having to use any software. Nevertheless, it only works for static datasets that must be uploaded onto Swivel’s servers, as opposed to being served from the Web. Is there any better solution currently available?
The goal is pretty simple: I have a dataset developed with an online database such as Dabble DB, and made available through a CSV or JSON feed. From this dataset, I want to display a chart on my blog or my website, while being able to control some of its display attributes, such as title and legend. How do we go about doing such a thing without having to write a single line of code?
Well, it seems that the solution is once again offered by the good folks at Zoho. For my experiment, I created a simple dataset in Dabble DB showing the adoption rate of Intalio|BPMS in 2006 (number of user organizations). I made it available as a CSS feed, then created an empty spreadsheet using Zoho Sheet.
From there, I took advantage of a brand new feature called Link External Data, which allowed me to dynamically embed my Dabble DB dataset into my blank Zoho Sheet spreadsheet, while setting the refresh interval for the public CSV feed to 15 minutes. What this means is that every 15 minutes, Zoho Sheet makes a lookup to Dabble DB, and fetches an updated version of the dataset. I then selected the data range for which I wanted a chart to be produced, defined the chart’s look and feel, and published it for everyone to see.
Of course, the link is a dynamic one, which means that when the data is updated from Dabble DB, the update is automatically reflected into Zoho Sheet, and the chart is dynamically refreshed.
So, what does all this mean to us Office 2.0 workers? Well, we’re now able to build quite sophisticated dashboards that can integrate multiple datasets served from different Web services, without having to write a single line of code, nor paying a single dollar for it. I don’t know about you, but I kinda like it.
Moving forward, for simple charts, I believe that it should be possible to get rid of the spreadsheet that stands in the middle, and simply provide a CSV feed to a tool like Swivel in order to get the chart produced automatically. But for complex charts and dashboards, using an online spreadsheet as a way to aggregate and process data is actually not such a bad idea. All I need from Zoho Sheet at this point are more types of charts, and more control over their look and feel, such as font sizes for example.
Keep up the good wok folks!
Entry filed under: Office 2.0
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This is a really cool solution, Ismael. By the way, you’ll also see updating capability and APIs rolling out from us over here at Swivel.
Brian Mulloy
CEO & Cofounder http://www.swivel.com
Brian,
Thanks for the heads up! I would really like to see such features becoming available. I love the look and feel of your diagrams, and the ability to mesh multiple diagrams together for data analysis purposes is very appealing. Please keep me posted!
Best regards -Ismael
Ismael,
Thanks for the post, and glad to be of help.
That is one nicely growing community — congratulations! -Sridhar
[…] Do you obsess about data? If so, Swivel might be able to help feed your obsession as it lets you explore, compare, share and upload data and graphs about politics, economics, weather, sports, business and beyond. […]
You may wamt to check EditGrid as well. It has the same ‘Link External Data’ function, while providing far more chart types (about 30 chart types). See an example here. Of course, you can get a permalink for any chart, and post it to your Web articles.
Cool!
How about providing functions for meshing sources like Wufoo or Quimble?
[…] Original post by Ismael Ghalimi and posted by Mark Bean […]
Sridhar,
Thanks, we’re pretty happy with the growth rate indeed…
Best regards -Ismael
Dbai,
I think that you can embed multiple data sources from a single Zoho Sheet spreadsheet today, which would give you the ability to develop the kind of mashups you’re talking about as long as your data sources provide the right kind of feed (CVS).
Best regards -Ismael
Tony,
Thanks for sharing the link to EditGrid. Very cool indeed!
Best regards -Ismael
Hello All,
I love this idea. Real time updating of visual charts. I remember wanting online spreadsheets years ago, and there were very few available. Today, there is are multiple options. Now ,I face the same situation with real time charting, and it seems Zoho & Editgrid are the few. However, is it just me, or what you describe in your post is kind of old hat compared to some of the solutions I found on HotScripts.com, like Flash Charts Pro, Swiss Chart, or Fusion Charts?
Garman,
You’re right, Zoho needs more types of diagrams. They’re working on it.
Best regards -Ismael
[…] While we’ve had support for numeric, money and date/time types in Dabble for a long time, we haven’t really fulfilled our deep data potential when it comes to presenting the data in useful ways. In fact, the other new feature announcement today is long overdue (and some people haven’t waited around for us). […]
[…] A couple of weeks ago, I described how to use Zoho Sheet alongside Dabble DB in order to generate charts that can be dynamically embedded into any web page. Well, it turns out that I was not the only one interested by such a features, and the good folks at Dabble DB just released support for charts and maps. […]
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