data visualization to the end user dashboard development tools we already have our glorious dashboardbut we want to end this with short (and far from exhaustiveoverview of the alternative software choices when it comes to presenting your numbers in an appealing way you can go with proven and true software packages of renowned developers such as tableaumicrostrategyqliksapibmsasmicrosoftspotfireand so on these companies all offer dashboard tools worth investigating if you're working in big companychances are good you have at least one of those paid tools at your disposal developers can also offer free public versions with limited functionality definitely check out tableau if you haven' already at other companies will at least give you trial version in the end you have to pay for the full version of any of these packagesand it might be worth itespecially for bigger company that can afford it this book' main focus is on free toolshowever when looking at free data visualization toolsyou quickly end up in the html worldwhich proliferates with free javascript libraries to plot any data you want the landscape is enormoushighcharts--one of the most mature browser-based graphing libraries the free license applies only to noncommercial pursuits if you want to use it in commercial contextprices range anywhere from $ to $ see highsoft com/highcharts html chartkick-- javascript charting library for ruby on rails fans see google charts--the free charting library of google as with many google productsit is free to useeven commerciallyand offers wide range of graphs see js--this is an odd one out because it isn' graphing library but data visualization library the difference might sound subtle but the implications are not whereas libraries such as highcharts and google charts are meant to draw certain predefined chartsd js doesn' lay down such restrictions js is currently the most versatile javascript data visualization library available you need only quick peek at the interactive examples on the official website to understand the difference from regular graph-building library see of courseothers are available that we haven' mentioned you can also get visualization libraries that only come with trial period and no free community editionsuch as wijmokendoand fusioncharts they are worth looking into because they also provide support and guarantee regular updates you have options but why or when would you even consider building your own interface with html instead of using alternatives such as sap' businessobjectssas jmptableauclickviewor one of the many othershere are few reasonsno budget--when you work in startup or other small companythe licensing costs accompanying this kind of software can be high