Forum OpenACS Development: Re: 5.2: survey-library requires survey 5.1.4d2, survey is 5.0.1

Hi Malte,

>Could you ellaborate why?

It works, it's stable, there are APIs to "show survey" and "process survey" so it was easy to embed in other packages.

>Could you commit this work so we can see how to make assessment work this way?

I couldn't commit because the assessment procs call ad_conn package directly so they didn't when called outside the assessment page. I did a write up (Carl asked me to) and sent it to Don (who might be looking at it depending on a big list of priorities). I'd be happy to send it to you.

.Furthermore, why didn't you use a callback that will hook into contacts if you want to have additional user data?

I didn't design the use of assessments as a way to extend registration. I think though, the don't want any coding...and the callback way you'd have to extend the database,etc. They wanted the end user to be able to add fields whenever they wanted. Also the branching, etc.

>Two different intentions. Assessment is supposed to be a general tool for doing assessments, not for arbitrarily extending the CR. Obviously if such a method would exist, we could slim down the code in Assessment, but it is not there.

Right, so we agree. People are now trying to use assessment as a way as a way of arbitrarily extending the CR.

>This is due to the fact that you have a large flexibilty when it comes down to the presentation of questions and a lot of ways to reuse them. Thats why we usually do heavy cashing :). But improvement and feedback would be highly appreciated.

I had some ideas in the doc I'll send you.

"Would an organization using .LRN or the current survey be happy if they upgraded and got all these new features or would they suddenly have software that is more complex then they need?"

It would probably be to complex, esp. with the current User Interface in assessment as it take 4 steps per question. The features should definitely be paramaterizable and/or have simple and complex view.

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Posted by Andrew Piskorski on
Tracy, at least to me, code review write ups of that sort sound like something that should preferably be published on openacs.org, rather than just sent to one or two members of the OCT. IMO, the more solid technical review that gets done in the open, the better off OpenACS will be. If there are, say, proprietary client-specific details embedded in the report, then that's good reason to keep it private until you can find the time to do a 2nd draft. But if it's fear of stepping on other developers' toes (aka, politics), well, I think some toe bruising is a cost worth bearing.
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Posted by Carl Robert Blesius on
I posted a copy here (agree with you Andrew):

https://openacs.org/storage/view/miscellaneous/Assessment-Review.doc

I asked Tracy to do it, because she has looked at the code with fresh eyes for a client project she worked on recently and I am trying to get an idea of what we can do to improve it.

I am working with Don on another project that might allow for some improvements to assessment (if it actually fits into the requirements AND I can convince Don to touch it), but for now any sort of feedback and open discussion on possible improvements/direction would be appreciated.