I've bitten off a large project, and I'd love some advice. I need to write survey creation and taking software analogous to Slices [ http://www.electricvine.com/products/Overview.asp?ProductID=31 ] or Pegasus [ http://www.websurveyor.com/prod_intro.asp ].
I'm claiming we're better off writing our own than buying theirs for two reasons: 1) full control (I know my apps will survive a linux kernel upgrade, we can fix our own bugs, we can add features on demand) 2) integration with our other applications, current and future I've been given the chance to "prove" my claim, so now I need to write the thing. To keep this moderately on topic, here's my planned layout. I'd love to have comments and (in particular) to be informed of any CPAN modules that will do parts of this for me: First, an overview of what we've got: Dynamic pages are perl CGIs running CGI::App (or rather, a subclass with a few local functions added) and pulling Template::Toolkit templates. no mod_perl. (Haven't needed the speed, and we're too busy developing new apps to overhaul the whole system without cause). Linux system. Here's my current plan: Survey creation script/module will step you through the creation of a survey. Just getting questions is easy, but I need to allow for some layout directions, form validation, and branching control (If you answered "Yes", go to question 6). The end result of this, which steps through several pages, is an XML file that describes the survey. This would have to be able to save a survey and later modify it. Survey taking script/module reads the XML file and displays the given survey, collecting data through several pages. Many people will doubtless fail to complete the entire survey, and I want that data, so I'llhave to have some method of savign session data to file. I won't, however, be allowing people to come back with a new session to complete their old session. Survey report script/module takes the answers for a given survey for a given date range and returns an Excel spreadsheet. I'll probably put some really fundamental analysis there, but make the end user do anything sophisticated on their end. Judicious use of CGI::App should allow me to create subclasses for special cases -- identity verification, extra analysis, etc. So far I've identified and involved (beyond CGI::App): HTML::FillInForm Data::FormValidator Spreadsheet::WriteExcel Modules I'd like to have clues about: XML<->data structure translator (something more direct than XML::Parser) Session data that I can fairly easily manipulate from "outside" sessions, and not involving mod_perl. CGI can save and load, but it appears to overwrite itself, where I'd want to merge. Comments?A --------------------------------------------------------------------- Web Archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/cgiapp@lists.vm.com/ To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
