Anyone have a recommendation for some chart / graph software that creates more modern, nicer looking charts/graphs than excel? Looking to create a few graphs with some modern "cool looking" polish for a print report I'm working on that will go out to a general-public audience.

Never did find anything really nice, so I ended up styling them by hand in coreldraw after importing the raw flat graphs from open office. A little transparent gradient overlay and they looked nice and glossy. Still somewhat laborious if the data changes since they're fixed now.

Hello Jeff,

This is unrelated somewhat to your post for graphs ( at least yet for me) but I was wondering if you could help, as this is the most recent OpenOffice post there is up here...

1) Installed OO Open Office awhile back,

2) Created a MySQL DB on server ( remote ) etc...all works fine

3) DL'd ODBC 5.1 for MySQL for Windows 32bit...etc...it shows up.

4) Just can't get it frigging connect...(to remote server) :3306

Was wondering by chance, if you use Windows/Etc...and the above also?

Thx much in advance,

jim

I have not used openoffice to connect directly to a remote mysql server so I do not know if there are any glitches there. Are you sure your local IP is allowed to connect through your local and server-side firewalls to the mysql port? Does your server's mysql server accept remote mysql connectsions from your local IP and do other programs work? Maybe someone else that uses open office more will jump in to help. I just got started with it last week after always using microsoft office previously.

Hello Jeff, and thank-you very much for the reply.

I figured it out, as I had (3) things that equalled up to the problem. I was just that I was in a hurry...not thinking, as my "pup" had been stolen 2 weeks ago today, ( and 2 months ago my main dev PC with Office 2k Drive crashed out and the disks are in storage 1,700 miles away)...

I was in a hurry to just print something as simple as #10 envelopes...from a remote DB I had created. <b>TRUST ME</b> You do not want to do this with this software... It's crazy.

The probs were:

a: Remote for mySQL needed/allowed in cPanel
b: I was not Admin on my 2000Server box (local)
c: I had allowed F'wall Outbound only..(local)

Again, the for the reply...

Jim

I believe PowerPoint has the ability to handle flash. If so, you can probably use the XML/SWF Charts.

http://www.maani.us/xml_charts/

The charts are pretty nice looking and the learning curve isn't too bad. I've been using the PHP/SWF version to build some metrics graphs for our display walls.

Thanks! That is nice looking. Much appreciated!

We use Business Objects here for a lot of our reports.

We're evaluating the new Crystal Excelcius as well.

Do you actually run Crystal Enterprise (Business Objects) job processing/web servers?
(Those servers, btw, is what is going to cause me to die early...haha).
Moving their support team over to SAP didn't help the issue either.

Xcelsius 2008 looks cool. I have not heard of that yet.
I may start looking into it.