Dear all
We have a challenging data collection project with this goal:
* Several dozens of questionnaires are being designed in each year,
distributed to many different agencies that span wide geographical areas.
These questionnaires are required to be filled by agencies, some
questionnaires require 300,000 answered questionnaires be collected,
others require 1000 or 2000 questionnaires.
* Some (less then 10%) agencies don't have constant Internet access, they
needs to delivery filled questionnaire data back in email (XML file as
attachment for example) or paper form. For filling questionnaires offline,
some software must be installed (Acrobat Reader if it's capable, or Open
Office, or Microsoft Office) that can open the questionnaire we sent to
them and fill it and get them back.
* Some agencies have constant Internet access, for them it would be better
to let them open browser and fill the forms on-line.
* The questionnaire change very often, although most changes are only
update to some of the questionnaires. There are 200 to 500 questions per
questionnaire, most of them are multiple choices or digit fields. Each
questionnaire usually have less then 3 tables where each table cell are
digital fields. The questionnaires have structure in it, usually many
sections and have complex validation rules inside. Each questionnaire must
have an offline delivery form (e.g. ODF or PDF) and an on-line form.
* The questionnaires are being designed by non-IT-professionals, they can
do WYSIWYG operation and are advanced MS Office users but not capable of
programming, CSS or raw XML authoring. The goal is they should be able to
be trained to design questionnaires in both paper form and web form.
* The collected data are stored on a database (probably NxD) for future
analyze.
I think probably this is possible:
* Train the questionnaire designers/operators to design questionnaire with
Open Office Writer (XML document). They make one ODF document for one
questionnaire.
* Use some XSLT technology to transfer the ODF document (with XFORM
contained in) to such a format that can be used by an XML engine on the
web (e.g. Firefox with XForm extension or any of these server-side XForm
engine).
* Deliver the ODF documents to agencies without constant Internet
connection and ask them Deliver filled data back.
* Develop a web application to handle XForm data submitted on-line and
accept the XForm data delivered offline (and uploaded to the web
application in HQ).
However I am not sure
1. If this solution is feasible or did I overlook some issues or
show-stoppers
2. Is it difficult or easy to make designed XForm in ODF available
on-line, is there any existing solution for this? (I am not even sure if
we can simply saving the ODF as HTML and let the web application use this
HTML document). Can we easily preserve the layout and validation rule if
we converted the ODF XForm and pass to XForm engine?
3. Is there a better solution?
Thanks a lot! Sorry if I asked stupid things for lack of background
knowledge or forget to provide more requirement information (please let me
know).
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