[ANN] chartsEngine - now on revSelect

[Resources]

Hi All Rev Developers,

I want to let you know about my recent
experience with chartEngine. I am an
ISP, WeHostMacs.com (small plug) and have
been looking for a way to chart over a hundred
thousand data points that I collect from my
servers each month. The data points happen to
be the load average of the CPU. Load average
is a moving set of data that is reported at
the 1, 5 and 15 minute marks.

You can see your own if you are using a Mac,
by entering "top" or "w" into your terminal
window without the quotes.

I am taking this data every minute over
the months until I flush the data from the
program. It becomes a huge data set.

What this tells me is how the server is doing
across the days, weeks and months. It is
telling me if the server is ever overloaded
and if so to what extent.

So, in comes chartEngine to the rescue. I have
been looking for a way to take this data and
chart it so it would be much easier to see
what all this massive data means.

I started with the most likely candidate,
MS Excel, a decent program to do charts in,
but to my surprise I was stopped cold by a
32,000 data point limit. My jaw almost hit
the ground. A program that cost $229.00 if
you buy it a la carte can't chart more than
32,000 data points.

Next up, DeltaGraph 5, another program that
has been around for quite a while. During my
testing of it I was shocked again. Just pasting
in 812,544 data points on 270,848 lines blew-up
the program. Hmmmmmm, was not expecting that.

Finally, I gave chartEngine a try. First, Rev
was able to handle that same data set that I
tried to put in to DeltaGraph 5 in one field
with no problem at all.

Next I made my chart and clicked on the "Chart"
button to see that my chart was made in 3706
millisecs - that gave me a big smile. Finally
I had my graph and it was fast. Very fast.

So at this point, I had to see if I could break it!

Lets see. Lets try 1,000,000 lines with 3 data
points per line or 3,0000,000 data points 

It took just 13,330 milliseconds.

How about 3 million lines that should do the trick.
Well, it came back in 45,553 millisecs. But, I
wanted to see if it was slowing down. Well, it
did but only by 13.3% while tripling the lines
of data. The 1 million lines processed at 75.0
lines per millisecond. The 3 million lines
processed at a rate of 65.7 lines per millisecond. 

Ok, let's kill it with 6 million lines or 18
million data points. 

Well, all I can say is that it whipped it out
in only 104,746 milliseconds and it slowed down
by in speed again by 12.8% while doubling the
data. The rate at this point was 57.3 lines
per millisecond.

In conclusion all I can say is WOW, good job Malte.

If you are looking for a fast and well written
charting program I really don't think you can
go wrong with chartEngine.

I know of no other solution that can draw the
number of data-points and as fast as chartEngine
can - period.

Regards,

Jeff McWard
WeHostMacs.com
(800) 356-9566
(408) 253-8500