Visualization

There is an amazing overview of visualisation libaries and tools here: http://selection.datavisualization.ch/

We clearly cannot analyse and test them all. So maybe we have to pick one of the tools based on a few criteria:

• open source
• python interface / api
• does it have the type of plots we want to make for sure
• project activity / active community
• other?

And we should not forget that the choice for [Time series storage and analysis](Time series storage and analysis) can come with a visualization tool.

So, any suggestion for a tool that will fit our needs?

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Some tools that are not covered in the overview of http://selection.datavisualization.ch/

Flot charts

http://www.flotcharts.org/

Short description

Flot is a pure JavaScript plotting library for jQuery, with a focus on simple usage, attractive looks and interactive features.

Matplotlib

http://matplotlib.org/index.html

matplotlib is a python 2D plotting library which produces publication quality figures in a variety of hardcopy formats and interactive environments across platforms. matplotlib can be used in python scripts, the python and ipython shell (ala MATLAB®* or Mathematica®†), web application servers, and six graphical user interface toolkits.

Gnuplot.py

http://gnuplot-py.sourceforge.net/

Gnuplot.py is a Python package that interfaces to gnuplot, the popular open-source plotting program. It allows you to use gnuplot from within Python to plot arrays of data from memory, data files, or mathematical functions. If you use Python to perform computations or as 'glue' for numerical programs, you can use this package to plot data on the fly as they are computed. And the combination with Python makes it is easy to automate things, including to create crude 'animations' by plotting different datasets one after another.

Closed source solutions

Google charts (visualisation)

https://developers.google.com/chart/

Short description

Javascript classes which render HTML5/SVG pages.

Strong points

• Large fanbase, growing fast
• lots of options (and examples) available, such as carpet plots, zooming, combining multiple plottypes
• Sandbox (ajax api playground)

Weak points

• external DB to be converted to a "data table/data view" object
• lmgtfy
• not open source