However that means you have to write a heap of reptitive glue code (or sed incantations if that's your thing) to mangle your SQL Results into the JSON format your charting tool wants. If you run a lot of ad-hoc queries you have to waste a significant amount of time on this boring legwork that could much better be spent on interesting tasks.

FnordMetric aims to fix that by extending standard SQL; it allows you to express the data query and the chart specification in a coherent fashion (SQL).