OPS suitability / Can it handle this?

Hi,

I'm evaluating middleware for a new project and have spent the last couple of days playing with OPS and reading the docs. Generally I'm impressed as we favor a native XML environment.

I have a requirement to build a detailed survey/questionaire-type solution that will be used to collect responses from businesses. We have a collection of approx 500 'questions' that we need completing by each user - and some questions could require the response to be typed in to a detailed form.

It is unlikey that any one user will get asked all of these questions but the sequence that any user follows is dynamic and totally controlled by their responses to previous questions - ie. your answer to any question will determine what set of questions you need to answer next.

Each question (and its response) will be stored in an XML document. I can clearly see how OPS makes it easy for me to process the completed form submitted in response to a question... but I wonder how you recommend we handle the need to have dynamic control of the page flow? The examples I have followed all have reasonably static/hard-coded flows. What I need is the ability to drive the page flow dynamically as I interpret the results of each submitted response/form.  I guess what I'm asking is for the ability, when processing a form, to *easily* tell the page flow controller which of 500-odd pages to go to next.

When the survey is complete I will need to hoover-up all of a user's responses and build a PDF - that seems pretty straightforwad using OPS.

In summary then we expect to have up to 500 forms that will be linked together dynamically as a user proceeds through a survey... and I need a very flexible way of controlling this flow and avoiding hard-coded 'switch' statements etc.

We do not expect many concurrent users of this solution but it has to be absolutely rock-solid as it will be recording very detailed financial information and we cannot afford to 'lose' anything.

Does this sound like the type of solution ideally suited to OPS?

I have been evaluating OPS 2.8 would you recommend we do this with 3.0? (I want to run a pilot in early 2006).
 
Thanks.

Alan.



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[hidden email] wrote:
 > Hi,
 >
 > I'm evaluating middleware for a new project and have spent the last
 > couple of days playing with OPS and reading the docs. Generally I'm
 > impressed as we favor a native XML environment.

Thanks! We are glad you like the OPS approach.

 > I have a requirement to build a detailed survey/questionaire-type
 > solution that will be used to collect responses from businesses. We
 > have a collection of approx 500 'questions' that we need completing
 > by each user - and some questions could require the response to be
 > typed in to a detailed form.
 >
 > It is unlikey that any one user will get asked all of these
 > questions but the sequence that any user follows is dynamic and
 > totally controlled by their responses to previous questions -
 > ie. your answer to any question will determine what set of questions
 > you need to answer next.
 >
 > Each question (and its response) will be stored in an XML
 > document. I can clearly see how OPS makes it easy for me to process
 > the completed form submitted in response to a question... but I
 > wonder how you recommend we handle the need to have dynamic control
 > of the page flow? The examples I have followed all have reasonably
 > static/hard-coded flows. What I need is the ability to drive the
 > page flow dynamically as I interpret the results of each submitted
 > response/form.  I guess what I'm asking is for the ability, when
 > processing a form, to *easily* tell the page flow controller which
 > of 500-odd pages to go to next.

In such a case, you would likely not choose to create 500 pages in the
page flow: you would rather go with a generic page able to dynamically
build any of the 500 questions. With XSLT and XForms, this is easy to
do. This generic page would ask a "rules engine" (which may be an
actual rules engine if the task is complex, or very simple logic
otherwise) what next page to go to. The dynamic page would then run
again showing the next question. We know of several users / customers
who have followed such a dynamic page / rule based approach.

 > When the survey is complete I will need to hoover-up all of a user's
 > responses and build a PDF - that seems pretty straightforwad using
 > OPS.

For this you can use the XSL-FO converter, or the PDF template
processor, in case you already have a template PDF file.

 > In summary then we expect to have up to 500 forms that will be
 > linked together dynamically as a user proceeds through a
 > survey... and I need a very flexible way of controlling this flow
 > and avoiding hard-coded 'switch' statements etc.

It seems to me like the above approach would work quite well.

 > We do not expect many concurrent users of this solution but it has
 > to be absolutely rock-solid as it will be recording very detailed
 > financial information and we cannot afford to 'lose' anything.
 >
 > Does this sound like the type of solution ideally suited to OPS?

Without any doubt!

 > I have been evaluating OPS 2.8 would you recommend we do this with
 > 3.0? (I want to run a pilot in early 2006).

With OPS 3.0, you get much better forms and excellent support for the
XForms specification. We also plan to support OPS 3.0 as a priority
over OPS 2.8. Since we plan (crossing our fingers) to release OPS 3.0
final in November, the timing will be fine for your pilot. I would
even suggest you start working with OPS 3.0 betas right away.

I hope this helps,

-Erik




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