Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
This process is repeated for each question. The survey can then be web-enabled
to make it available to the public. As a full-fledged database application, FileMaker
has many tools for creating reports and summaries of the collected data. However,
running surveys with FileMaker currently has a few drawbacks which make it a
bit more difficult to use than some other options. FileMaker's form entry mode
shows one table on a page. If, as is commonly the case, the survey is to be repre-
sented as multiple pages, then multiple tables will need to be created, and a
scripted button will have to be created to allow the survey taker to move on
to the next page. Currently, the web view of FileMaker databases is designed to
mimic the direct view when using the application, and is not completely suitable
as an interface to people taking a survey, who should have no interests in
the specifics of a database. Older versions of FileMaker had a web mark-up lan-
guage to help design the web form, but this feature was dropped in version
6. However FileMaker version 9 will have a PHP application programming inter-
face (API), which will make it easier to design the web-based view presented to
end-users.
Otherwise, online surveys can be built entirely using open source or, at any
rate, freely available tools. Open source software in general means software that
can be downloaded and modified by the user, subject to certain restrictions.
Open source often means free of cost, but that is not necessarily the case.
Someone with good skills in database management and web application pro-
gramming could create a web-based survey from scratch using open source tools
such as the
Apache
web server,
Mysql
or
Postgresql
database systems, and web
scripting languages such as PHP, perl, python or ruby, or in a somewhat differ-
ent approach with the Java programming language. Fortunately for most
