UDAV is a cross-platform program for data array visualization based on the MathGL library. It supports a wide spectrum of graphics, simple script language, and visual data handling and editing. It has a windowed interface for data viewing, changing, and plotting.

For many people the mere thought of having to create or use a database sends shivers down the spines of many users. But it doesn't have to. Creating a database and adding data to that database is actually a simple task in OpenOffice.org Base.

Applications for graphical visualization of data on Linux® are varied, from simple 2-D plots to 3-D surfaces, scientific graphics programming, and graphical simulation. Luckily, there are many open source possibilities, including gnuplot, GNU Octave, Scilab, MayaVi, Maxima, OpenDX, and others.

The ability to import and export data is crucial to any database management system, and OpenOffice.org Base is no exception. While you may be surprised to discover that OpenOffice.org lacks a dedicated import/export feature, it does allow you to get data into and out of a database in a variety of ways.

Tools like phpMyEdit allow you to create a quick-and-dirty front end to a database, but what if you need to publish a spreadsheet or BibTeX file on your website and give your visitors the ability to dynamically sort, filter, group, and visualize the published data?

RMS: « Clown plans to build a centralized Big Brother data base for all communication patterns in the UK, and give it to a private company.

Abuses are almost inevitable. Individuals will misuse the data and governments will misuse it. »

A data warehouse is a repository of an organization's electronically stored data. Data warehouses are designed to facilitate reporting and analysis.

While OpenOffice.org Base is good for storing and querying data, it doesn't provide any easy way to chart information. This is exactly what Calc does best, with its dedicated chart module. If you want to visualize data stored in a Base database, you can write an OOo Basic macro that pulls data from a database, inserts it into a Calc spreadsheet, and then creates a chart. Here's how.

As you may remember from my previous post, I simply wanted to import three spreadsheets into an MS-Access equivalent, use the "Query By Example" (QBE) mode to create a simple report and export the result to another spreadsheet. I did the whole thing in MS-Access as well and it took me about twenty minutes. This time I decided to give Kexi 1.1.3 and Knoda 0.8.3 a go.