[thelist] Graphing (and MS Office) Help

[Hershel Robinson]

I am almost done building a Perl-driven database site.  The client now wants
professional looking graphs outputted to his browser.  I found a Perl script
which hooks into MS Chart (part of MS Office) and produces very high quality
charts:
http://www.winscriptingsolutions.com/Articles/Index.cfm?ArticleID=22049

The script runs on my machine and on my associate's machine just fine.  I
compiled it using the infamous perl2exe (trial version) and sent the .exe to
the client (who doesn't have Perl) and it ran as expected on his system.
The three of us are using combinations of Win 2K, Win XP, Office 2K and
Office XP.

On the Win 2K host machine, however, the script does not run.  The first
problem is that if the outputted GIF does not exist, the script generates an
error.  The second problem is that if the GIF does already exist, the script
deletes it and that's it.  No errors, no graph, no nothing.  The host tried
the script on three of his local machines and all three demonstrate the same
behavior.  We can not figure out what might be causing this.

1 Does anyone have any ideas why this might happen?  I am using essentially
the same version of the script that is online at winscriptingsolutions.com.
My only slightly edited version is here:
http://hclic.gwsystems.co.il/hershel/MYmsgraph.txt

2 If we can't get this script to work, does anyone have any other
suggestions for graph generation?  I have not found any other Perl solutions
which generate charts of the quality of MS Chart.  At this point, I would be
interested in other technologies that that the Perl could hook into.

Thanks,
Hershel