What are the available charting tools in the market for comparison.
It should support both Java and .NET.
It can be open source as well as cost.Please mention the licence type.
Mention it needs any other external softwares like Flash player or other external plugins
Any tutorial/sample links for each if possible/available.
It need not be supporting real time but charts should be pleasing to eyes.
we are using http://www.amcharts.com (among others) which is quite nice and cheap (flash based)
I've used FusionCharts (commercial) in the past. It is flash based and uses XML to structure the underlying data, so it is fairly easy to integrate with any language. There are additional basic APIs available for use with various languages (JSP and ASP.NET included). Their gallery is at http://www.fusioncharts.com/Gallery/Default.asp
Have a look at this list of Open Source Charting & Reporting Tools in Java. The most used reporting tool in the Java world is probably JasperReports and it is what I use at work.
I have used JFreeChart and found it to be very useful. There are a large number of chart types and structures. Additionally, you have control over the output format, which should allow you to embed in most applications. We currently use it in a back end process that uses a .Net client front end.
License is GNU LGPL.
If you're happy to call a remote web service, take a look at Google Charts
You could have a look at JFreeChart. I have seen it being used extensively in some pretty (thick) rich client frontends.
It is licensed under GNU LGPL.
The one thing that I would mention about this library is that documentation might be a little scarce and might be a steep learning curve if you're new to it. They do recommend buying their own developer guide. Having said that, if you're up for it, you could try reading their source code and debug what's going on under the covers.
Related
I have seen the use of the word "platform" and the word "framework" used interchangeably. I would like to get some input on the subject. If someone could answer these questions, it might clear it up for me...
Is .NET a framework or platform?
From the product side, would Visual Studio be considered a Platform?
What would JavaScript be considered?
I am confused. :)
Thank you for your time.
I would say that a platform is something you build on top of -- your OS, an ORM or a set of services provided by an API.
A framework is something you use to build up inside of -- think ASP.Net, WCF or .Net itself.
The platform has functionality which you are extending, while by itself the framework does nothing until you utilize it to create an app.
.NET is a Microsoft Framework
Visual Studio is an IDE
JavaScript is a programming language
A platform IMO is a system, a kind of environment, can consist of a number of different frameworks working together. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computing_platform
Framework is a toolkit to help you get things done quicker and with conventions so everyone is on the same page.
I can simplify you a little things:
we can say that Windows OS is a "platefom" but about. Net is a "framework"
Generally:
Framework is a set of components that are used to create foundations, architecture and outline for a software.
A platform is formed by the assembly equipment such as a PC and an operating system.
I'm working on some Flex spike in my company. We are basically evaluating different scenarios etc. What solution would you recommend for embedding Flex components into Java app? Flex <-> Java communication is not (yet...) an issue, just embedding swf into JFrame.
I've done it with EasyJCom. It's pretty straight forward as long as you're using one of the standard Java windowing libraries (Swing, awt). You can see an example (From the EZJCom site) here: http://www.ezjcom.com/FlashTest.java.txt
The people responsible for EasyJCom are also very responsive, and even though we ended up not using their product (Switching platforms), I'd recommend them.
I haven't used JFlashPlayer, but did take a look at the docs, it seems to be adequate as well. I think their license requires you to obfuscate your code. I thought it was a little odd, but maybe I mis-understood the license.
It gets quite a bit more complicated if you don't want to use Com, or if you need to embed in another type of window.
If you need to embed flash cross platform, you may be stuck rolling your own Jini library for the Mozilla plugin. At that point... Maybe it's worth just switching platforms if you aren't too far in. ;)
Haven't tested this, but it looks like JFlashPlayer will do the job. http://www.jpackages.com/jflashplayer/
None of these supports Linux or MacOS. So much for the cross-platform Java and Flash.
I think the best way to do something like this would be to embed something like xulrunner into your java app then have the java app interact with flash via the xulrunner interfaces.
I'm developing a Java ME app & need pointers to some really good UI libraries. I did see a few such as Java ME Polish. Are there any more out there? For e.g. ebuddy's java ME app has an amazing UI and so is gmail's java ME app. What libraries would they have been using or would have they have developed it on their own?
Sun recently released and opensourced their solution to crappy looking lcdui. It is called LIghtweight UI Toolkit and can be found on lwuit.dev.java.net
We have been trying lately on kuix.. So far so good and more light weight than LWUIT
code.http://code.google.com/p/kuix
eSWT would be available for MIDlets on the latest J9 VM, as used by the Series60 3rd Edition feature Pack 2 handsets (Nokia N78, 6210, N96...) but we're mainly talking about nicer looking UI controls. Basically, a MIDlet can look much more like a native application now.
Sun has recently open-sourced LWUIT.That could also be worth a look.
Nothing beats drawing your own images on a Canvas,though. Generic layout managers in any kind of library will only get you so far. You should only look at the available technologies once you have a good idea of how many different kind of screens your application should have and what they look like.
Most of the apps with amazing UIs (Opera Mini, Gmail, any game from an AAA developer) use custom UIs developed in-house. These developers take the task of developing an UI as one more in their projects and give it personality, involving professional graphic designers. Going with a packaged library would quickly accomplish the task but it would make the application look generic and bland (less bland that with the default UI, but still bland and limited).
In short, go with a packaged UI for quick development, but don't expect the level of quality to be near the apps you mentioned.
I'm facing a similar dilemma right now. We're currently using the default, high-level LCDUI framework for the speed of development, but its severely limiting what we can do. I had thought our best option would be to use a third-party UI framework, but I'm now coninced that if we're serious about the application we should write our own. Its like anything in software, if its mission critical to your application you should write it yourself, even if it that means re-inventing the wheel.
Digitalapes has developed a framework for J2ME application development that includes a high level UI library.
The library is lightweight and well documented, you can get have a look at the Gear framework page for more information, or you can directly download the JAR and javadoc from Gear's sourceforge page.
Digitalapes blog includes also a series of tutorial about how to use the framework.
Polish has really nice set of UI components, which are skinable with css style comments.
It also features a device database for compatibility purposes.
Some tipps if you decide to go with polish (as i did):
Use eclipse and the mepose plugin. The netbeans integration is really nerve wracking.
The bulletin board is dead, so by all means !use the mailing list!.
If you are not familiar with the ant building system, you better start now.
The J2ME Polish book is not worth its money. (My opinion). The documentation on their website and the sample coded are enough to give you a solid start.
I've used SWT when deploying to a full profile J2ME (IBM J9 on PocketPC), I don't know if it is usable by MIDlets however. It's quite a nice GUI library in its own way, and far better than AWT.
Unfortunately companies usually end up designing their own GUI's when it comes to mobile development. It's the only way to have full control over your interfaces, but you should consider if it's worth the additional development time, and you're also on your own when it comes to device compatibility issues / handset bugs - of which there are plenty.
If you are happy with a less flexible interface, you can go with one of the existing libraries. I currently use J2ME GUI from http://www.garcer.com/. We get the same flexibility as with desktop development and it also features custom styling, so with a little extra effort you can make it look the way you want it to.
You can use LWUIT for the UI development in J2ME framework.
I'm looking for a way to display a VNC viewer in a thick/rich java client (specifically, I'm using SWT, but if I can get it into AWT/Swing, I can integrate that specifically.) This is not an applet, but a real, live, thick java client.
TightVNC is probably sufficient; however, its GPL license is too restrictive for my needs.
Is anyone aware of a Java VNC library available under a less restrictive license?
A quick survey of the options thus far (I haven't found a satisfactory answer as of this writing):
vncjlgpl - Server only. Perhaps I could use the knowledge captured here to roll my own, which would make it a derivative work, which could be LGPL'd.
TightVNC - Provides a Java-based viewer. I haven't looked at the source yet, but I'm assuming it could be reused suitably. However; it's GPL license prevents reuse in my pseudo-commerical product.
RealVNC - Provides a Java application that is a VNC viewer. Commerical product. No source available. A publicly available installation of the .jar (launchable via webstart) is here.
I don't know if you still need something for this, but I've found the MetaVNC (on sourceforge) java viewer is pretty simple to work with. Last mods were in 2007 so it doesn't look like it's being maintained, but it might give you basic functionality.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/vncjlgpl, possibly?
Edit: never mind, that's a server only. I got distracted when I clicked the wrong link.
I am interested to create a drag-and-drop layout designer using only JavaScript, HTML and CSS. The designer will allow the user to drag the page elements from one place to another (something like Blogger's layout designer) to create a site layout. But I don't want to hand code everything in JavaScript, I would prefer to write my application in .NET (preferably) or Java and rely on a compiler to compile it to JavaScript and HTML.
What are the .NET or Java to JavaScript compilers that you have used and can recommend? For Java to JavaScript I know GWT is available. What about .NET to JavaScript? Microsoft did come out with Volta, but the project seems to be no longer available.
Look no further, you already mentioned GWT pick that!
It has a very good API and many good applications have use them.
Even JavaScript frameworks like http://extjs.com/ have GWT support.
I use it for an small JavaScript calendar recently.
To be honest, I don't really like JavaScript that much. Most of the times the errors are hard to track (specially for a non JavaScript guy as me) and the workarounds included some plug-ins for the explorer just to get exactly what a compiler should do. Catch silly error early.
In the other hand I'm very familiar with the Java Programming language, and many of the libraries (if not the most important) such as java.lang and java.util have been ported to GWT.
Plus, the guy who wrote relevant parts of java.util is the same behind GWT (google Joshua Bloch.)
Check out Nikhil Khotari's Script# project. It allows you to write C# code and compiles it to JavaScript.
Script# has already been mentioned. It hasn't been updated since August 2008.
Milescript is another, but also has seen very little for 6 months.
Extsharp for the Ext library. Adds Ext support for Script#
Javascript compiler to Java (going the wrong way for you)
Java to script Eclipse plugin
My issues with Script# (a known issue) is it doesn't support jQuery yet. However it comes with a very lightweight library to tie in with the .NET framework, in Nikhil's sscorlib.js file and ssfx.core.js files. And also has support for lots of other Javascript APIs (mostly Microsoft, seeing as he is in the ASP.NET team).
I'd love to see a Script# extension for jQuery (I'm thinking about writing it if it's easy enough). As it stands, most don't provide full compilation yet but they're certainly getting there.
Update: I wrote a small extension to enable JQuery support Script# a few months ago. The project can be found here.
I'm going to second the use of GWT. I've used it for several projects and, when used in combination with a modern editor like Eclipse or IDEA, it really makes the mess manageable.
It's important to note that not only does it allow you to write in Java and have that transformed into optimized and obfuscated Javascript it also comes with a substantial subset of the core Java API. In addition to this they provide lots of additional classes for doing things like parsing and working with JSON and XML and communicating with a server via asynchronous HTTP. You can check out the docs to get an idea of what else they offer.
Another feature that might be of special interest to you for implementing drag and drop functionality is it's integration with javascript libraries like Ext and scriptaculous. Either through pre-built interfaces or via JSNI
Also for Java there is J2S.
Java2Script (J2S) Pacemaker provides
an Eclipse Java to JavaScript compiler
plugin and an implementation of
JavaScript version of Eclipse Standard
Widget Toolkit (SWT) with other common
utilities, such as java.lang.* and
java.util.*. You can convert your
SWT-base Rich Client Platform (RCP)
into Rich Internet Application (RIA)
by Java2Script Pacemaker.
This means that if you use the SWT IDE (drag and drop) you can then convert the generated code to JS + HTML.
I wouldn't hand write any Javascript for UI. This can lead to maintenance disaster. jQuery is what I am using but I still wouldn't use it to write full UI Javascript code. ExtJS is also another good option if you plan to write in Javascript. In general what I am saying here is that it's so much easier to main in Java/C# than Javascript. Check out cappuccino framework and Atlas. Never used GWT. Script# is similar to GWT but for ASP.NET framework. Also depends on the requirement, if your site is public facing then RIA isn't a good option. It's all about which extreme end you pursuit (hand written and web standard, or RAD or libraries like jQuery/ExtJS as the middle option).
Check out Axial, a .NET to JavaScript converter that works well in ASP.NET. It supports WebForms, jQuery and canvas. It's not very mature, but it's worth a look.
http://jsc.sourceforge.net/ is a C# to JavaScript, Java, Flash and PHP compiler.
JscriptSuite offers another free .NET to Javascript compiler. There is a big difference to Saltarelle (jsc, SharpKit# etc.). Developer write down and debug only C# code (or any other .NET langauge), like in GWT. Javascript will be generated für deployment only.