Use cacti or mrtg to generate graphs based off ms-sql data?

[pifiu]

I have an MS-SQL database that stores sales informations and everything from customers to products.

I was wondering if there is any way to use some sort of a graphing system like cacti or mrtg to gather that data and generate real time graphs of whats going on.

For example get the sales value from the DB and graph it say every day, hour, or w/e time.

Same thing with items in stock, etc. Is it possible to filter data? Say make a drop down menu to change products and generate a graph based on that? I dont see why not if the previous is possible.

Is something like this possible? I've never setup, or compiled anything like this so if anyone could help me or help me get started on the right track to see if this is even possible it would help.

[BSOD2600]

You would need to write an sql query/script that pulls/parses/spits out the data you want in a format for cacti. Read through http://docs.cacti.net/node/70 on how to go about creating your own script and needed templates. Plenty of existing examples in the script forum too, in case you get stuck.

[TheWitness]

I use this very method to graph host metrics and it is very fast. I have a system that forwards information to the database asynchronously from Cacti's poller, and then Cacti simply graphs the latest value in the database repository.

Using this method combined with Cactid, I can easily graph more than 10,000 hosts.

TheWitness