SVG Charts

I’ve been toying with the idea of writing a code to render SVG Charts server side and serve it to user. I know there are a lot of solution out there that do graphs, but most of them are in flash or a system the spew out images. I have to admit they they all look nice, and quite affordable. But I realized that there are no good SVG chart engine out there. And this not in any of my KPIs just decided that it is a good project to start.
Below the quickpress (in the admin dashboard), there is a nice flash chart running.
I’ve written the code in asp and for now I’ve got 4 charts running pie(easy), bar, line, and scatter. I’m trying to make it as web 2.0 as possible, the reflective base, that semi-circle shade etc. For the charts available i’ve added the option to make each more presentable, pie-doughnut, pi-split, bar&line with 3-D look, line-fill etc. In the end it looked quite, it can even beat excel 2003 (not 2007) generated graphs easily on the look dept (as any of the web chart engine available).
But more work need to be done to it; more charts type to be added, live trending (with ajax), etc. The code is in asp, but later I’m planning to rewrite it in javascript, and instead of having the data sent to asp in url encode, I’m planning to put some not existent data island on the html and have javascript parse that data island.
How do I add svg stuff to wordpress.

EALIS – ECLIPSE (Nisoft) Link

Finally access to eclipse database server, the rep from Nisoft has provided me access to a table which stores custom information. The table only contains data that are of interest to Ealis, so it is small. Since I’ve already written the code for the interface it didn’t take long before I managed to get a test version running. The instruction was to have the status from ECLIPSE (a work permit software) to be graphically displayed on our system drawing (svg).
I have to admit I don’t have a very good web design instinct, so the interface look bleak and flat. While on the subject of my weak point, I don’t think I’m a good programmer either. The code and html part is everywhere, maybe i need to have a go at asp.net the only reason why i jumped straight to asp because it’s supported by default on 2003 server. Most of the time when I do any interface work the were no feedback, but this time around I’ve got boss to look after the development work. She have an idea of her own. So presented to her my idea, then she gave out her view. Changed the look, then she gave out more ideas. By the third revision she decided it was best to ask our boss. And then he had some idea of his own, another three revision. Funnily enough I’m back to my original design. Then he said maybe it is best if the user were the one who decide how the interface should look like.
The biggest problem when you talk to somebody who is not a programmer they have the impression that everything is programmable. And seeing me an engineer by trade, just happened to be programming, doing an OK job at on strengthen their idea that it’s that easy.
Enough with that, the foundation for the link is there, just needed some view on how it should look like. The way the link work is simple, any sets of drawings contains a set of equipments. Get the drawing-equipment list compare it back to the eclipse link and feed that back through xml back to the svg. Then do so fancy effect onto the equipment representation on the drawings.
One thing I realized that now, for the first time eclipse has a link with a database that is not under my care. I should take extra precautions since the server is a critical server. Aside from the drawing link, I’ve slide some code to make the main query shows their eclipse status, at first I hardcoded the whole thing to my search program, two days later I found that EALIS failed to properly generate it’s pages, then I realized, eclipse db server is down at site.
Knowing this I’ve realized that there’s another new issue that I am facing, my services especially EALIS-eclipse link will depends on the availability of eclipse db server on site, if the server or the connection is down the service will not be available. So instead of hardcoding it onto my search program, I’ve put some JavaScript trigger inside the search code so that data is filled by ajax. Doing this ensures the continuity of the main service while providing the EALIS-Eclipse functionality. But in doing so only made the code messier. But I can worry about that later. Where do I need to look to have a go at good code writing practices. Been looking around the net and not much help.