Mac OS X Charting Application / Database
I need an app. I don’t know if it exists. If it does it needs better marketing. 
Anyway, here are my requirements.
Nice looking Charts - I say “nice looking” because they don’t need to be as beautiful as the charts Keynote produces. However I’ve seen some charts out there that look like something a three-year-old created with crayons and a ruler. We’ve got Quartz Extreme, Core Image, and OpenGL so stunning charts shouldn’t be a problem. The charts need to support polynomials and moving averages.
Easy Customizable Data Entry - Sure I can create option lists in Excel, but being stuck in that grid interface isn’t the cleanest way to create a data entry form. I want something like a FileMaker Pro layout where I can drag and drop option lists, radio buttons, checkboxes, etc onto a controlled layout. This is how data entry should be.
Powerful Data Queries - I want to be able to look at my data in ways I can’t think of today. Maybe I want to analyze my revenue by day of the week. Perhaps I want to compare sales versus leads by channel. I’m not sure how I want to look at my data tomorrow, but creating another worksheet in Excel with calculations from other columns then incorporating those results into a new graph isn’t the answer. I want a nice form where I can select items from a list or tick a checkbox and have a chart that automatically updates.
Solutions Considered
Excel - This is how I’m doing it now. My worksheets are 5% actual raw data and 95% calculation columns…. Rolling up by day of week, month, or year. Calculating percentages, maxes, minis, means, etc. I shouldn’t need to create all of those columns to look at the data from so many angles, thus the data really belongs in a database like MySQL.
LAMP - Or in this case MAMP. I could construct the MySQL database, then use PHP to create a bunch of query builders though HTML pages. Then find a PHP charting class to char the results. But creating something custom like that from scratch is way more work than I want to put into this. And I haven’t come across many PHP charting classes that draw polynomials and such.
FileMaker Pro - Does pretty much what I need, and does it well… except for charts. Why oh why are there no charts in FileMaker? There are some plugins, but the ones I have seen produce those crayon drawn looking charts that I would never want to use in a presentation.
Aabel - This looks pretty nice. But I don’t want to spend nearly that much money on this project. While analyzing data is important, it isn’t my full-time job.
Current Status
Basically I’m going to evaluate any solution suggested in three categories. Data Entry, Data Storage, Data Charting. Right now my best option for Data Entry is probably FileMaker Pro. The best option for data storage is probably MySQL, however FileMaker Pro could also handle the task. And for data charting the best option is probably Excel. They look pretty nice and support polynomials and moving averages. Of course having the database crunch the polynomial and/or moving average data and feeding the results to Keynote to graph via AppleScript wouldn’t be a horrible option either.
As of this moment I’m considering building the data entry interface into FileMaker Pro. I would also store the data in FileMaker Pro. And I’m going to experiment to see if I could build a Query Builder of sorts in FileMaker that then perhaps sends the resulting data via ODBC (Actual Technologies ODBC drivers for FileMaker, Excel, MySQL, etc) to Excel. Maybe that would work. Bu there’s got to be a better way…
Explore posts in the same categories: Computer Technology, My Works