Hey US boys,

I have got two short questions:


1. When will .csv export/import of surveys be implemented?


2. What about postgres support? Is this easy to implement because it can be done by the CakePHP framework or will it take some time to support postgres databases?


I couldn't find any direct hints at the roadmap so I hope you can help?

Question 3, database layout: Being the poor guy who has to take care of the idiots that spam our forum I have noticed that lots of users are searching for ways to connect their applications to limesurvey. Especially saving additional data in the tokens table is a repeating request. There are a few workarounds to pass additional data via URL like
This data (only 2 attributes) can be stored at attribute1/attribute2 at the tokens table.
The LS2 database layout doesn't show any options to save additional data (if I am right). So the question is if we should add 5-10 additional free fields so that data from other applications can be stored within the LS2 database.

Should we discuss this one at the mailinglist?

Any opinions/suggestions?

Unfortunately I don't receive any answers What's up Juhan, Michael?

Let's continue with question 4: Statistics

a) Did you decide which library you will use to create statistics? Artichow, JPGraph or a flash library?

b) Will there be a statistics add-on which is can do statistical computation of means like arithmetic mean, standard deviation and so on?

c) Will it be possible to cross query data like "Show the results of questions 2, 4 and 11. Only take the numbers of male people who are older than 30."

Still waiting for some answers...

1. csv import/export of survey: This will likely not be the way to import/export. It will likely be xml based. As for when I do not have a time table as we are still working on the core of the system.

2. PostgreSQL should be supported out of the box though no testing has been done as of yet.

3. People wanting to connect applications to LS2. Can you provide more details as to what they are trying to do? How do they want to connect the applications?

4. statistics, no decisions have been made

5. advanced reporting will be handled via plugins

Hope this helps!

Thanks for your help, Michael.

Regarding 4.: There are different requirements. Some just want to add data to probands in the token table, others want to connect databases with person data to limesurvey.

Here are some examples:
- Connect LimeSurvey accts with RoR accounts

- using attribute in token table

- Adding fields to registration

- Competing profile before continuing survey

- More than two custom attributes in tokens?

Often there is information available (age, country, weight) which should be transfered from other applications into limesurvey.

These are just some examples of the last weeks. There really is a need to store additional data somewhere and connect it to surveys. I think that's what the fields "attribute_1/2" in LS1.x were made for but this is a really half-baked solution. We should try to find a better way for LS2!

I certainly do not have good or complete answers for all these scenarios at this time but I can say:

1. RoR question: we currently provide a mechanism for authenticating against and external system as well as sync the user attributes with the source. We currently have an LDAP auth plugin doing something similar. They would essentially have to write a plugin to communicate with their auth system. The plugin required is lightweight.

2. attribs in the token table: this just sounds like a bad idea. We really should not be mixing data not related to the survey system in the survey tables. I can see why someone would want this type of functionality but we need a better strategy for handling there cases.

3. Adding fields to registration: this seems to indicate people want to collect more data as part of a users profile. We can account for this by allowing admins to customize the user profile page

4. Competing profile before continuing survey: This is an interesting problem. What indicates a profile is complete? The minimum we currently require is a username and password. I do not think we want to get into the game of requiring much more as we want it to be a light weight process for users. Perhaps as part of #3 we can also allow admins to set the required fields. As for requiring the profile be complete before a survey can be taken... I can see this being a type of survey level conditional but we have not put much thought into that yet.

5. More than two custom attributes in tokens: I think somewhere in my above comments this is addressed.

I hope this helps. Now just an FYI this message by no means is an indication that any of this will be available anytime soon. We need to get the core of the system solid before we begin to worry about these types of additional features. If you get a chance it would be worth adding some of these to the Mantis Roadmap for 2.0 Beta.

Just a short note regarding #4:
There have been some requests where users wanted to set up a survey which reads out participants' data and pre-fills some fields in the survey so that the users can correct/add information themselves.

This isn't possible with 1.x but would be a nice feature.

A very similiar case is when users offer incentives and want to add an email adress to the participants data. This data should be gained by using a survey but shouldn't be saved in the survey table but in the users table.