What are some good tools for data analysis / database visualisation / reporting [closed]

Question

I have developed a web application driven by a mysql database that stores information about users, site usage, photo uploads (its a photo based site) etc. I have multiple databases storing data for different aspects of the site. I want to be able to produce reports for some of the questions I will have about how the site is growing and how it is being used. For example, how many new users have uploaded over a certain number of photos this month.

What tools are available to analyse databases - i have been using a trial version of microsoft access and exporting each of the database as an xml file and importing to access, where I created the relationships and used the query wizard to generate some queries and reports. These are the activities I want to do and they produced the reports I want to have. I also want to be able to run queries across databases...

What other tools to people use for this sort of task with mysql databases? Is there any good advice / training materials about the workflow for creating such reports and managing this activity over time - eg should I take weekly exports of databases and run the queries to generate the reports?

What are people's experiences of this type of task?

all advice, input welcome.

Answer 1

Welcome to business intelligence, the art of making information out of data.

A usual architecture is Source --> ETL --> Data warehouse --> Reporting tools

ETL : extract transform load (today you are copying your databases but some free tools can help you change that : CloverETL, Talend, etc...)

Data warehouse : this is the place where you put your data and prepare it to be easily used in reports

Reporting tools: many free tools exist today such as BIRT, JasperReports, etc... but I strongly recommend QlikView, the personal version is free (if you don't need to share your results), it's a very easy tool to use.