On 02/20/11 23:45, Jimmy Hess wrote: > On Fri, Feb 18, 2011 at 1:13 PM, Max Pierson <nmaxpier...@gmail.com> wrote: >> Anyone out there using something other than rrdtool for creating graphs?? I >> have a project that will need a trend taken, and unfortunately rrdtool >> doesn't fit the bill. All of the scripting, data collection, >> database archival, etc will be custom written or is already done (with some >> hacks of course :). So really what i'm looking for is something along the >> lines of GNUplot. Has anyone used it before and would like to share > > I haven't heard of gnuplot used often with other software as a framework > for graphing/visualizations. For simple visualizations, I think usually a > 'native' framework/API is preferred, e.g. JGraph for java apps. > > I suspect one reason gnuplot is not used as widely as it could be otherwise > is, its licensing is not as "friendly" as other graphics frameworks. > gnuplot license is GPL incompatible and does not seem to even fully meet > the open source definition, > > Because redistributing complete modified source code of gnuplot itself > is not allowed by the license; a clear reading of gnuplot license suggests > only patches, unmodified source code, can be freely redistributed, > redistributed binaries based on modified source have special rules). > > > Aside from that caveat, which most likely does not normally impair private > use by a network operator: gnuplot is a really good tool. > If you need to paint a bunch of arbitrary X and Y values on a graph from > an input file or based on simple equations, gnuplot will happily > oblige; it can > handle chart types rrdtool cannot, and you have more direct control of > output. > > If you want some 3D / surface graphs, RRDTool won't do it, anyways. > Gnuplot's less expensive > than Matlab / Maple. > > You can even set terminal type to "dumb" in gnuplot, and generate some fancy > ASCII art graphs on stdout. > > > In regards to scalability... > > About the millions of rows... err.. > Try plotting a test dataset with 500 million datapoints. Chances > are gnuplot won't > necessarily scale that well either, and you need some method to be > selective of which rows are > provided as input to the plotting framework, in that case. > > If you have a million datapoints on your X axis, each X position is > smaller than 1/1000 of > a display pixel (on a graph that fits on a display at say 1920x1080); > displaying such high resolution of all datapoints at once on the > unzoomed graph is beyond > the display hardware capabilitiy. > > there should normally be some form of averaging / smoothing / > "selection of points" contemplated, > if the dataset is huge > >> experiences?? Seems like it will be able to my plot data accordingly, but >> wanted to see if there were any other popular tools I've yet to come across. >> >> (Open-Source only please) > > -- > -JH > If you can use Java, JfreeChart is pretty nice. It has the ability to create many different types of charts/grpahs. I've only used it a little bit for a project I was looking into that uses it, but it seems really capable. I think it's licensed under gpl or lgpl, but the creator charges for documentation/examples if you need them.
http://www.jfree.org/jfreechart/
