don't you think the api is too much complicated?

[kismilan]

I've been reading the api doc for two days. It makes me feel puzzle.

As a js library for data visualization, what the api need to do is
accept some form of data and present it. Of course, ajax and events
are also required items, but others?

How i support data? Must i implement a interface according to the
datasource addressed in the doc? Do i have to handle every params in
the query url with standard methods? What is the meaning of the data
source standard offered by Google? How to i implement a data source
with PHP?

I still have same questions about 'query language'?

It looks like that there are too many things this api has offered, too
many to cope. Where to start? How can i use it simply?

Do you have same feeling?

[yuki.shizuku]

I feel exactly the same way. I am too overwhelmed with info that I'm
getting frustrated!
I think we should start from the beginning instead of jumping into
topic after topic.
I realized I only get more confused because I didn't even bothered
understanding the
basic.

[kyle Hailey]

Considering how quickly people give up with things I consider simple, I'm impressed by what people are doing with the Google API.

I think the docs are a bit obscure but I generally feel that way about docs.
Luckily there is the example show case where I can take working code and tweak it.

Given that this is  a free service and you tend to get what you pay for, I think this pretty dang cool.

I do wonder what the revenue model is here.
and considering much of this will never be used by many companies since it can't be hosted outside of google, I wonder if they will sell a version that can be hosted locally.

Kyle Hailey

http://sites.google.com/site/youvisualize/

[trollswagen]

Actually, I disagree completely. I think this is one of the best APIs
I have seen. And the documentation is better than most. If you are
having problems understanding a particular part of the API, you should
post specific questions.

I am currently implementing my own data source for serving data to a
visualization from a SQL database and it is simpler than I would have
thought. However, I'm coming from a Java background, and I'm not
familiar with PHP so maybe its a "cultural" thing... If you are
familiar with using J2EE webapps (war), its very easy to put a servlet
stack that will serve your data from any SQL table. Not sure how you
would do this from other web app containers.

If you are having trouble understanding how the Visualization API
works, I suggest you start serving a JSON dataTable directly to your
visualization, before you start messing with the Data Source API.