I have lot of data stored about my users and now I can build user analytics from this data to provide meaningful data back to my users. I can output this as normal text which is ok but I want to display bargraphs, charts, world maps, etc...
So the question is how do i take all the data from my tables and add in all these graphs /maps? Do i need some software packages or do i need to "code" the graphs/maps? If software packages then are there any open source I can use?
The data saved includes user logs like visits, browsers etc along with lot of business activity details so i want to show my users like top 10 clients, top countries they came from, top products, top customers etc.
My platform is: MySQL and codeignitor PHP. I do not have a data wearhouse built but that can be done once i have a plan for how I can output all this data visually so it looks good.
your choices are vast and almost limitless. Assuming you don't want to write your own library, consider the Google Chart API or the rGraph library I use rhraph a bit more but fellow coders prefer the Google Chart API...
Are you trying to write code that generates dynamically updated analyses? or are you just trying to conduct the analysis over a set time period and 'post' it so that your users can view the results of the analysis? For the latter, you need is a statistical package (like R or even Excel if you want it quick and dirty). For the former, you are going to need an API (like Google Chart).