The idea
Most enterprise data sits behind heavy frameworks or expensive business intelligence licenses. DataLaVista is an open-source toolkit that brings SQL queries and interactive charts into the browser itself, so a team can build a dashboard with no server, no backend, and no license. It began with SharePoint lists, which are notoriously hard to report on, and reads JSON, CSV, Excel, and REST data as well.
How it works
Everything runs as JavaScript on the page. You connect to a data source, shape it with a query builder or a SQL editor, design the dashboard from visuals, tables, and HTML widgets, and generate a report definition in JSON. Publish that file to SharePoint or any web location, pass its address to the page, and the link becomes the shareable dashboard. Inside SharePoint Online it installs through a script editor web part; anywhere else it loads as a page or a frame.
Context
DataLaVista came out of the Automators Anonymous community of practice at the University of Michigan, when a need for dashboards outran the rollout of licensed BI tools. I built the first version in a day and lead its continued development with colleagues at the Depression Center. It is meant for fast, lightweight reporting and data exploration by business and casual users, not as a replacement for a full BI platform. The project is university property and open source.