Using Questionnaires

Questionnaires are appropriate if:

• The data collected must be a list of structured questions, but the data itself is not used extensively as the basis for program logic. That is, when specific information must be present in the request, but a human will process that request.
• There is a common structure for an entire family of standard forms or requests.
• The data collected for a particular type of form – an invoice, move order, help desk request, etc. – will change from one organization to the next or from one region, business unit, or staff-level to the next.
• The survey or form is replacing a Word document or Pdf form that is transitioning to electronic format. In these cases, some fields of the survey may be eventually moved to database format, or processed by xQuery facilities of the database (e.g. to find out how many event request, key request, or parking applications there were per day).  The advantage to using an XML document format for the data storage is that the results are electronically accessible in a way that a stack of paper results or saved .doc files on a hard disk are not.

Questionnaires are not appropriate if:

• The data collected must be validated server-side. There is no server-side validation of the user’s answers. All validation is in the entry form.
• The data collected must be queried or manipulated in SQL statements. While possible, accessing the data embedded within the XML is not conveniently done in SQL.
• The data collected must appear in many views or reports. In this case, the mechanisms for displaying, showing, hiding, and editing separate fields make creating a new field to hold the data the easier implementation choice.