[ABE.pm] Report/HTML generation

[Faber J. Fedor]

I've got to put together a report.  Gathering the data together is no
big deal.  The presentation OTOH is.    I want to run it past youse
[sic] guys to see what you think and for suggestions for coding/modules
and if Ruby On Rails could do something like this.

In HTML terms, the report consists of a bunch of tables containing
aggregate data inside of a outer table.  The outer table is a two column
table with two rows of tho outer table spanning columns.  For the two
rows that span columns, there is a barchart associated with each inner
table.

A cool feature would be the ability to click on a piece of aggregate
data in one of the inner tables and have a popup window showing the
constituent data.  And/or double clicking the aggregate data to open the
constituent data in another window.   The possibilities are endless.

And I have to be able to send the whole kit-n-kaboodle to a client who
will not have access to our database.

So here's how I'm thinking of doing it: Have Perl (Ruby?) gather up all
the data and write an XHTML file that is entirely self-contained, e.g.
the file consists of the aggregate data tables, the data for the popup
tables, the CSS for the layout, etc..

Good idea?  Bad idea?  Any suggestion(s) to make my programming life easier
to do this (other than outsourcing the job)?


-- 
 
Regards,
 
Faber Fedor
President
Linux New Jersey, Inc.
908-320-0357
800-706-0701

http://www.linuxnj.com