OT - looking for feedback per development tools

[Kevin Kempter]

Hi All;

We're preparing to embark on a new development project. It will eventually be 
released dual projects similar to Red Hat with a commercially supported side 
and a leading edge open source side.


The project will pull data from a database and present info to users. We'll 
need a graph/chart component and a way to generate html, PDF and spreadsheet 
reports/downloads. It will be a web based interface.

Questions:

1) I'm thinking we'll write the initial commercial (closed source) code in C. 
Anyone have any thoughts/alternative suggestions ?

2) anyone know of a good source of C library routines (something like CPAN) ?

3) Any thoughts on the methods to generate XML via C ?

4) Any suggestions per the generation of the PDF, HTML, etc reports on screen 
and for download ? maybe php within the web front end? a set of C routines to 
be called based on basic report parameters? others ?


Thanks in advance for your feedback...