What is the best product for generating reports and graphs?

[Blue Gill]

I am currently sending scada type data for pump controllers to my data base and I need to add a tool that will give me the most flexability for generating reports and graphs that will help me do data analysis.
Using Linux OS Fedora Core 2 and SQL

Is the History module for Lookout the best product?

[THailey3]

Hi BG,

Unfortunately, Lookout, DSC, and DIAdem are not currently options for Linux users. If you are interested in using LabVIEW as your main tool for this, you could explore the existing Report Generation palette in LabVIEW. Also, if you are interested in generating Microsoft Excel or Word reports, you might be interested in purchasing the Report Generation Toolkit for Microsoft Office.

http://www.ni.com/toolkits/report_gen.htm

Hopefully this helps,

[MJBrehm]

On the topic of Generating reports with graphs and such.... I was noticing when generating a standard report using the Report Generation VIs, when I append a graph using Append Control Image to Report.vi ... I lose sharpness of the image, and appears more pixelated then it does on the front panel.

Is there a way I can have that graph in my report without a loss of resolution?

It is most noteable in the numbers on the x-y scales, and the scale labels. Ive tried playing a little with the size of the graph when being appended using the property node, to no avail. Also tried saving as a png instead of jpg... which helped a little.

Any other options?

Thanks in advance.

Matt

EDIT: just noticed this is probably not the best forum, but the search function lead me to here.... so its not my fault!! 😛

Message Edited by MJBrehm on 07-06-2006 03:24 PM

[Megan B.]

Hi Matt,

The search may have led you here, but you'll probably get many more responses if you just create a new thread .  I ran a few tests and I can see what you mean about the image quality from the Append Control Image VI.  I believe that R&D is looking into adding more functionality to this VI so that the user can control the quality in a future version of LabVIEW.

In the meantime, I tried using the Get Control Image method of the Graph and then appending this image to the report.  With this method we can get a higher quality image.  I've attached a zip which contains two file:

1.  VI which appends an image of a Waveform graph to a report using the two methods discussed above.

2.  A .pdf showing the results.  You can see that the first image (Append Control Image) has a poorer color resolution than the second (Get Control Image + Append Image to Report).

Hope this helps!  Let me know if you have any questions.

Megan B.
National Instruments

Message Edited by Megan B. on 07-07-2006 12:51 PM

[MJBrehm]

unfortunately, I am running LV 7.1 ... so I couldnt see yur code, but I did see the differences in the two graphs. The bottom one looks much better. Tried to copy what you described but was unable, considering the get_image from the graph property node returns an Image Data cluster... and Append Image to Report vis either want a Vi reference, a control reference or a path/url ...

Tried to modify the code inside the vi's to fudge it to my needs... but to no avail... anyway you could drop it into LV 7.1?

[Megan B.]

Hi Matt,

I actually save the image to file and use that file as the input to the Append Image VI.  Sorry about the version, here it is for 7.1

Best Regards,
Megan B.
National Instruments

[Albert.Geven]

We developed some vi's to easily add data to excel via activeX
Maybe such stuff could be devloped for linux for Openoffice.

The idea is to have a template for the spreadsheet program and fill in the data and the links to the pictures.

The template can be changed by the user (layout and so on as long as the data is copied to the named cells.

In fact this could be done by NI but maybe better by OpenG to have free software communicating with other free software 

[MJBrehm]

Thanks for the suggestion and the vi example Megan. I will use the get image method as it seems to produce a crisper image.