Offline saving of form data

[Victor Engmark]

Background: People want to be able to record large amounts of product
data ("a few MB") on laptop or tablet PCs without _any_ kind of network
connection, and then to submit the data to a database in the office come
the end of the day. The installed base of the machines is controllable,
but should include familiar concepts and structures, and it should be
easy to deploy on many computers. The solution will be used for
approximately two years.

Concept: For this I am doing a feasibility study on XHTML, with tables
of forms to submit the data, IE as the browser, and some kind of script
to pack the data into XML.

Problem: Does anyone know if this is feasible in JavaScript, or any
other client-side scripting language natively supported by IE? I found
two solutions:
- http://www.acky.net/tutorials/javascripts/cookies/, which seems to
only be able to save the information into cookies, without prior
formatting, and
- http://developer.netscape.com/viewso...elds_form.html, which can't
handle more than 4 KB of data.

URLs to examples or concepts explained would also be welcome.

--
Victor Engmark

[kaeli]

Re: Offline saving of form data

In article <c08bst$gf7$1@s unnews.cern.ch> , victor.engmark@ cern.ch
enlightened us with...[color=blue]
> Background: People want to be able to record large amounts of product
> data ("a few MB") on laptop or tablet PCs without _any_ kind of network
> connection, and then to submit the data to a database in the office come
> the end of the day. The installed base of the machines is controllable,
> but should include familiar concepts and structures, and it should be
> easy to deploy on many computers. The solution will be used for
> approximately two years.
>
> Concept: For this I am doing a feasibility study on XHTML, with tables
> of forms to submit the data, IE as the browser, and some kind of script
> to pack the data into XML.
>[/color]

Can't they just put the data into an Excel file and upload it to the
server (via any application, ftp, whatever), which parses and saves it
as XML?

http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2002/01/09/q-and-a.html

--
--
~kaeli~
Once you've seen one shopping center, you've seen a mall.

http://www.ipwebdesign.net/wildAtHeart

http://www.ipwebdesign.net/kaelisSpace

[Victor Engmark]

Re: Offline saving of form data

kaeli wrote:
[color=blue]
> In article <c08bst$gf7$1@s unnews.cern.ch> , victor.engmark@ cern.ch
> enlightened us with...
>[color=green]
>>Background: People want to be able to record large amounts of product
>>data ("a few MB") on laptop or tablet PCs without _any_ kind of network
>>connection, and then to submit the data to a database in the office come
>>the end of the day. The installed base of the machines is controllable,
>>but should include familiar concepts and structures, and it should be
>>easy to deploy on many computers. The solution will be used for
>>approximate ly two years.
>>
>>Concept: For this I am doing a feasibility study on XHTML, with tables
>>of forms to submit the data, IE as the browser, and some kind of script
>>to pack the data into XML.[/color]
>
> Can't they just put the data into an Excel file and upload it to the
> server (via any application, ftp, whatever), which parses and saves it
> as XML?
>
> http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2002/01/09/q-and-a.html[/color]

For several reasons:
- Avoiding the extra parsing of Excel files
- Being able to navigate faster (links vs. Excel tabs)
- Smaller files to transfer
- The ability to use the same sheet online and offline
- Error avoidance, e.g. using maxlength="X"
- On-the-fly error checking
- Easy reformatting using CSS
- Guidelines and help files in pop-up windows or embedded in the page,
e.g. using <span title="User name (8 characters)">Ow ner</span>
- Familiarity for new users
- More space for relevant stuff (F11 vs. any normal Excel window)

--
Victor Engmark

[Richard Cornford]

Re: Offline saving of form data

"Victor Engmark" <victor.engmark @cern.ch> wrote in message
news:c08bst$gf7 $1@sunnews.cern .ch...
<snip>[color=blue]
>Concept: For this I am doing a feasibility study on XHTML,
>with tables of forms to submit the data, IE as the browser, ...[/color]
<snip>

As IE doesn't support XHTML yet, that combination should not be
considered feasible.

The need for local storage, combined with the exclusive use of IE makes
it sound like HTA would be worth investigating.

Richard.

[Robert]

Re: Offline saving of form data

[color=blue]
>
> For several reasons:
> - Avoiding the extra parsing of Excel files
> - Being able to navigate faster (links vs. Excel tabs)
> - Smaller files to transfer
> - The ability to use the same sheet online and offline
> - Error avoidance, e.g. using maxlength="X"
> - On-the-fly error checking
> - Easy reformatting using CSS
> - Guidelines and help files in pop-up windows or embedded in the page,
> e.g. using <span title="User name (8 characters)">Ow ner</span>
> - Familiarity for new users
> - More space for relevant stuff (F11 vs. any normal Excel window)[/color]


You can access to the client file system in IE. See:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/script56

/html/jsobjFileSystem .asp

I assume you have to enable it. I don't know what that does for
security.

The above link is from the JavaScript FAQ. See item number 4.3 on:

http://www.jibbering.com/faq/#FAQ4_3

You could run the Apache web server on the client machine. At first,
this will sound like a big step, but Apache is very reliable, used by
over 50 percent of web servers, easy to set up, and free. You would
have alot of flexibilty in programming because you could have access to
both server and client side web programming. You would have a 'secure'
place to store the data on the client machine. I have seen Apache run
as an intranet server without problems on a Windows machine.

Robert