Scientific or market research questionnaires mainly consist of questions in the following form:
INTRO: Indicate how much you agree with the following statements...
OPTIONS: very much - rather - so-so - rather not - not at all
ITEM 1: I love Coca-Cola
...
ITEM n: ...
Let's call the whole thing a SCALE. One scale consists of several items, has an intro, has a certain number of options. The database has the tables 'intro', 'option', 'items' and 'scale' with the necessary foreign keys. With the appropriate queries I select this information and inject them into the form-view in order to display my questionnaire scale.
This is ok as long as there is no non-tech third party who has to edit these scales. Recently an alternative approach has come to my mind. I thought it might be possible to use XML files for the scales, containing all the beforementioned data including translations.
I know that XML is a means of transport and not data storage, I know that querying XML is not as easy as using SQL against a database... but what about the third party? Should I rather develop a backend for them, where they can edit the questions? What is your opinion on that? Do you maybe know an alternative third way of storing questions (scales) for surveys?
SUMMARY SO FAR: ok, it seems that the edit interface is the better solution. Could anyone maybe write something about the question of speed concerning XML...
The best way would be to build that simple back-end for non-technical third parties.
Non-technical users would probably have trouble editing an XML file, and how would you check that the file was properly formatted after they edit it? Your software would have to check the input and spit out meaningful error messages, which means you would be writing a rudimentary back-end anyway.