Interdependent Web

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session info: Business Analytics in Drupal with Views

Slideshow with presenter's notes: http://is.gd/lXYU
(Be sure to turn on the "Notes on Slide" tab, since the actual slides have almost no text).

• Recurring problems are fun: if you can solve 80% of them with a single solution, write a module!
• Views is a great query builder, but it doesn't do graphs
• submitted a request, but people kept wondering "is it even possible?"  Are PHP/Drupal "serious" enough tools for business analytics?
  • PHP sites: Flickr, Wikipedia, Wordpress, Facebook, Digg, Del.icio.us
  • Drupal sites: FastCompany, The Onion, NY Observer, UN WFP, Recovery.gov
  • "Java is more serious: they have longer beards!"
• Views_charts module just contributed this morning, 6:00 AM!
  
  • just a display plug-in for Views
  • front-end for OpenFlashCharts (Flash), will soon also implement AmCharts and GoogleCharts (not Flash)
  • you can also write your own charts
• except: it's not all that easy (yet) due to SQL grouping and aggregation.
  • need views_groupby module, contributed yesterday!
• Panels, CustomPage, and Context help lay out pages
• What's next?  No reason why Views should only work with SQL... why not SPARQL?