What technology and framework for dynamic web application with interactive plots

Question

I will appreciate some suggestions to identify the best options for choosing a technology and framework to create and maintain a dynamic web application presenting scientific numerical material as interactive plots. It is supposed to be an interactive tool for researchers to explore a complex parameter space.

The principle is that computationally heavy calculations are continuously performed on a powerful linux (apache) web server on-the-fly in native C and FORTRAN applications as the user experiments with the input parameters in the browser. The server returns relatively small arrays with the results of the calculations to be continuously plotted in the browser.

I have considered something python based such as Django. The python library matplotlib is very powerful in a desktop environment but it is not ready for the web at this stage as far as I can see. I would be very interested to hear some experiences about this.

Groovy and Grails seems interesting as well but it appears most relevant for a Java back-end which I don't have.

A main consideration is how seamless/effective the interface to the workhorses (the C and FORTRAN applications) on the server can be made.

A "raw" home grown JavaScript/AJAX solution could probably also be realized, but I think it would tend to be difficult to maintain and a waste of work to re-invent the wheel probably.

Important criteria include robustness, cross-browser support, future safety.

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

The following link provides some jQuery Chart Libraries for Interactive Charts.

5 Top jQuery Chart Libraries for Interactive Charts

You can have a look to them and find a possible match to your needs. I hope that this is helpful.