Survey Input and Output data

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Carousel includes a specialized library for generation and management of survey applications. The following description gives a general overview of how the survey definition looks like. Surveys can be built using the Survey Editor [1].

Survey's Input Data

Each survey consists of Question Groups. Question Group is a set of questions of some association (i.e. person information questions, "golden questions", etc). The reason for grouping the questions is to extend the possible ways of survey processing. There are three types of supported question types.

Mutually Exclusive - user selects exactly one of the listed responses (these kinds of questions are usually rendered with radiobuttons).
Mutltiple Choice - user selects one or more responses (rendered with checkboxes).
Free Text - user types the responses (rendered with text fields).

Surveys can be stored either in xml files or a database. The name of the file containing survey questions should be in the format: [selected_language]_[survey_name].xml. The listing below shows the the sample xml survey definition.


	Listing 1 - Xml definition of a Question Group
	<Survey name="hotel survey"> ... <Group id="1" name="personal details"> <Q id="1" A="Please state your name" type="free text"> <R id="1" A="Firstname"/> <R id="2" A="Surname"/> </Q> <Q id="2" A="Gender" type="mutually exclusive"> <R id="4" A="Male"/> <R id="5" A="Female"/> </Q> <Q id="3" A="What is your age" type="mutually exclusive"> <R id="6" A=" less than 20"/> <R id="7" A="20 to 35"/> <R id="8" A="35 to 50"/> <R id="9" A="more than 50"/> </Q> </Group> ... </Survey>

In the XML above:

<Q> - Defines one question belonging to the group. The id attriute is a question's unique identifier. The A attribute specifies the actual question (text of a question). The type attribute indicating the questions type can take one of the following values: mutually exclusive, mutliple choice, free text
<Group> - Specifies the group's unique id and name.
<R> - Specifies responses for each question. The id attribute is an unique identifier and the A attribute defines a text of the response.

The scheme of database that can be used to store the survey questions should be as follows:


	Listing 2 - Survey database scheme
	TABLE Surveys SurveyID INT SurveyName VARCHAR(64) LanguageCode VARCHAR(4)); TABLE Groups GroupID INT NextGroupID INT GroupName VARCHAR(64) SurveyID INT Pos INT TABLE Questions QuestionID INT QuestionText VARCHAR(64) QuestionType INT GroupID INT SurveyID INT Pos INT TABLE Responses ResponseID INT ResponseText VARCHAR(64) QuestionID INT SurveyID INT Pos INT TABLE Languages LanguageName VARCHAR(64) LanguageCode VARCHAR(4)

Survey's Output Data

The responses given by the user can be stored either to a file or database. The example of the responses file is shown below.


	Listing 3 - Rules database table
	<Responses> ... <Survey name="SampleSurvey"> ... <Question id="5" text="What is your room number?"> <Response option_id="16" option_text="room number" answer="13"/> </Question> <Question id="9" text="Did you have breakfast?"> <Response option_id="32" answer="yes"/> </Question> ... </Survey> ... </Responses>

Listing 4 shows the structure of database table containing responses.


	Listing 4 - Responses database table
	TABLE ResultSets ResultSetID INT SurveyID INT QuestionID INT OptionID INT Response VARCHAR(64)

Survey Rules System

The Rules System is designed for the simple sort of rules used is surveys. Each set of rules is "attached" to a Question Group and describes the survey processing after answers for all questions in a certain group are given by the user. Each Rule consists of Conditions. A Condition is a question with the specified answers. The listing below shows the sample rules definition.


	Listing 5 - rules defintion
	<Survey name="hotel survey"> ... <Group id="1" name="personal details"> ... <Rules> <Rule name="rule one" target="3" id="1"> <Response question="12" option="38" answer="Yes"/> <Response question="13" option="40" answer="NO"/> </Rule> <Rule name="rule two" target="4" id="2"> <Response question="13" option="40" answer="Yes"/> </Rule> </Rules> </Group> ... </Survey>

<Rules> - Specifies a set of rules associated with a certain Question Group.
<Rule> - Defines one rule. The value of the target attribute is an identifier of a Question Group to which the survey should proceed when answers given by the user math the conditions contained in a rule.
<Response> - Specifies a condition. The value of the question attribute is an identifier of a question which the condition refers to. The option attribute specifies an identifier of one of the question's available responses, the answer attribute defines the actual answer that should be given to the question.

When using a database as an input data source, rules are stored in the Rules table as shown below.


	Listing 6 - Rules database table
	TABLE Rules RuleDesc longvarchar GroupID int SurveyID int

GroupID and SurveyID are the identifiers of the Question Group and the Survey respectively. The RuleDesc is an xml rule definition (as described above).

Carousel includes a simple rules engine that supports the types of rules described above, however if a more complete rules engine is required one can be plugged in. In order to do that the RulesEngine interface implementation must be provided and then pointed to by the XRulesEngine startup parameter of the project. The RulesEngine interface consists of two methods shown in the listing below.


	Listing 7 - RulesEngine interface
	public void handleGroup( QuestionGroup group, Vector responses, XmlElement rules ); public void handleAnswer( QuestionGroup group, Condition response, XmlElement rules );

The handleGroup(...) method is invoked every time the user finishes answering to questions of a ceratin question group. The method takes three parameters: the group is an object describing the group, the responses is a vector containing the answers given by the user, the rules parameter defines the rules associated with the group - this is simply a xml element nested inside the group definition and the name of which is "Rules", the actual content of the element can be specific to the rules engine that is used. The second method, handleAnswers(...) is invoked every time the user gives an answer for a single question (i.e. by clicking a radio button), the meaning of the group and rules parameters is the same as in the handleGroup method. The response parameter specifies the last answer given by the user (the one that caused the method invocation). The implementation of these two methods can use the convienient Survey API which consists of methods tasked with survey managment (i.e. adding/deleting questions to/from groups, saving user responses, etc. ) and thus gives the ability to apply different kinds of rules, to rotate questions, etc.