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Joshua Perry
Joshua Perry
2,962 Points
Posted by Joshua Perry
Joshua Perry
2,962 Points

Web-based Business Intelligence Dashboard - What track should I take?

I started my journey into programming because my end goal is to build my own web-based business intelligence dashboard for my company. I have sales data in excel format that I would like to turn into graphs on a web dashboard - with interactive functionality. I am just starting out and have no programming experience.

I've started down the Ruby on rails track and am starting to wonder if I should have gone the PHP route. I'm learning a lot, but I still have an unclear roadmap as to how to get to where I want to go. I know I have a long journey ahead of me, but would feel more inspired to keep going if I had a better idea of exactly how to get there.

Any advice out there?

1 Answer

Ricky Catron
Ricky Catron
13,023 Points
Ricky Catron
Ricky Catron
13,023 Points

I believe either Ruby or Python would solve your problem. Since you are doing Ruby/Rails you will need to find a graphing library to work with. I found [Chartkick}(http://ankane.github.io/chartkick/) which might help out. If not this list other alternatives.

You will also need to get data from excel spreadsheets. This library might do the trick and if not more solutions are here.

I would recommend finishing the ruby track, practicing a lot along the way, integrating these two features in one at a time and in small steps, and the finishing my constructing that site you have planed.

Goodluck! --Ricky

Joshua Perry
Joshua Perry
2,962 Points
Joshua Perry
Joshua Perry
2,962 Points

Thanks Ricky! This is super helpful.

Follow up question - and maybe I'm getting ahead of myself here, but I'll ask anyway - The data that I have in excel, will I be uploading that into MYSQL for interaction with Ruby?

Ricky Catron
Ricky Catron
13,023 Points
Ricky Catron
Ricky Catron
13,023 Points

I would recommend making a script which you could run which would upload the data from an exel file to the mysql database.