Julia Kim
CSCIE 259 (Spring 2005)
Project Proposal

i.Title

	Form-o-matic


ii.Author

	Julia Kim


iii.Abstract

	Generate simple forms in an XML format.  A form would be any document with various text fields, 
	select boxes, text areas, radio buttons, checkboxes, and text. The form in XML format can then 
	be transformed into a web page for a user to submit answers/data specific to that form, generate
	an XML file, or be saved to a database (although in this case, 	since I am not sure if there is
	a database available on nice, I might spit it out into a special text file so that the table
	structure will be apparent).


iv.What

	My application will consist of:

	1. web interface for user to generate and save a simple form,
	2. the form will be saved as an XML file by default,
	3. the form will also be saved to a database (or in a text file outlining the table structure 
		if there is no database),
	4. the user can view the web version of the form, and
	5. the user can test the form by adding values to the form which will be saved to another XML 
		file.
	
	I can use a number of different things we learned in class, like SAX/DOM, using the JAXP 
	packages, XPath, DTD, and maybe even servlets or JSP.  
 

v.Why

	This is a common problem that I've come across with administrators, and I think it would be 
	fun to try to come up with a solution using the tools from this semester. I've used products 
	in the past to try and generate forms, but I think a web accessible, XML solution would be 
	simpler and easier for people to use and understand.  
         
         An interesting extension of this project would be to generate many populated forms 
         from a datasource, in addition to having a user fill out a single form.  I was also        
         thinking about how I could use XSL-FO to generate PDFs using mass populated 
         forms.  This comes from using Crystal Reports to generate reports/forms, which I 
         found to be finicky and not the most intuitive software to use.


vi.How

	I think I will be able to use nice to develop my project, except for the database portion.  
	In that case, if it is okay, I would like to just spit the data or form into a text file 
	that would make the table structure apparent.  I have not quite decided if I wanted to use 
	servlets/JSP to generate the web portion, but I would need a web server for that and I could 
	use the tomcat installation that worked for the last project.  I think all the other software 
	I need is already available on nice.

	Some of the XML-based technologies it will use is XPath, DTD, possible XSL-FO, definitely the
	JAXP packages.  I will be using Java as the main programming language, and XHTML for the 
	web UI.

	I am not sure what new skills I will need, but I am interested in trying to figure out how
	to have the XSL-FO transformation happen with a click of a button instead of typing out some
	command lines.

	I think I will also need to think about the situation where the user wants to create more 
	than one form.  This includes the situation where the user is not finished (i.e. was 
	interrupted, wants to save the form, but add to it later) I also want to research the 
	possibility of having XSL-FO or something transform a web generated XML format form into 
	a Word doc or something that is commonly used and editable.  I am not quite sure how long 
	this project will take me, but everything in this paragraph is a possible extension if I
	finish the basic portion quickly.  


vii.Questions

	Is there a database on nice that I can use?  If there isn't, is there a simple one I can 
	install? (if there isn't, I'm okay with that – I'll just try to make the rest of my 
	project more interesting)