Christopher Adams wrote:
> I am evaluating phpESP as a possible large scale application offered
> as a service to a couple hundred organizations, with potentially many
> thousands of survey responses. I have been creating surveys and
> testing them and now I have a couple of general questions for those
> that have been using it for awhile. Some are fairly obvious to me, but
> I will ask anyway. Note: this is not criticism of the software, just
> an analysis with a critical eye, information that needs to be reported
> to a higher-up for evaluation.
>
> Authentication/access: I understand how the users/groups work and it
> seems to work quite well. I am wondering if anyone is doing
> authentication into the surveys by querying an existing mysql user
> database. We can run our users through our proxy with their regular
> authentication off a mysql database, but it would be nice if we could
> integrate that with the survey creation, editing, testing,
> administering permissions.
If you are using Apache and the "REMOTE_USER" environment variable is
set, phpESP will use assign that user to the survey response. So all
you really need to do is get a "basic auth" from Apache before the user
can access the survey. For survey creation, edit, admin, you'd need to
extend the authentication methods in phpESP. We currently do LDAP along
with the internal DB.
>
> Capacity/scalability: This could potentially have several hundred
> survey s being created during the same period of time and potentially
> there could be tens of thousands of responses. I understand the power
> and limitations of mysql and assume that this would be mostly
> dependent on the server speed and capacity.
>
Only limitation you may run into here is PHP memory and timeout limits
when you export survey data.
> Help/support/upgrading: How often is the software upgraded and is that
> based on a response to user input? Do users post patches, add-ons,
> etc.? Does the Developer list take input from users and is the General
> list the one-stop-shop for help?
>
I am basically the only core developer, with Kon Angelopoulos submitting
a few large patches. I'll gladly accept any well written patch that
implements something that is beneficial to the general phpESP
community. Input from the user/developer lists and RFE's from
Sourceforge are considered. Help can be obtained from mailing lists or
from the IRC channel(when i'm available).
> Statistical output/analysis: Are there any problems with the
> compilation of data? Are users creating add-ons that offer other ways
> of analyzing the data.
>
A few user add-ons have been submitted to the mailing list. You would
need to search the list to find them. You should be able to do any
statistical analysis you need from the exported data.
>
> Thank you for any information that you may want to share.
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