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4 Process-aware Questionnaires

1. Figure 5 3 Excerpt of the modelling environment of a process aware questionnaire config urator prototype The Questionnaire Builder component as shown in figure 5 3 is the part of the configu rator which uses PAIS functionality to create a process aware questionnaire A modelling approach following the design approach of 32 provides an environment where pages and its derivations are combined to an executable questionnaire Constraint sets are de finable via modelling constructs called filters In figure 5 3 the available pages for creating a questionnaire are shown on the right whereas the modelling area for the questionnaire 42 5 1 Core Components is displayed on the left side The resulting graph reflects the generic questionnaire model from section 4 2 and is automatically transformed into the required PAIS format by using interfaces provided by the PAIS as described in section 4 3 With the Preview component an overview of a selected simple or complex element is pro vided Especially questions with a large number of answer items or a text in several lan guages benefit from a fast preview during the creation of the element to check if the created element is complete Moreover decisions regarding the style like the font or font size require an immediate feedback for the user Feedback of the system is provided by dialogues as well The Dialogue component there fore offers a collection of necessary di
2. The QuestionSys questionnaire configurator see 28 The LimeSurvey questionnaire configurator The SurveyGold questionnaire configurator The StatPac questionnaire configurator A schematic representation of a questionnaire as a container for question pages questionnaire layer A schematic representation of a questionnaire page as a container for ques tion elements page layer 222 22 o Example for a process aware questionnaire at element level Example for a process aware questionnaire at page level Core componenis of the architecture of a process aware questionnaire con HAGAR aan era DIR Sa Ae dtd d Gi mo Ge TE eh a Excerpt of the element builder environment of a process aware question naire configurator prototype Excerpt of the modelling environment of a process aware questionnaire con NOUIFATOM DrOIOIYDG ie LL NID ee i a a A ww ew es Status bar of a process aware questionnaire configurator prototype Architecture of the persistence components of a process aware question naire configurator prototype vii List of Figures viii 5 6 5 7 5 8 A 1 A 2 A 3 A 4 A 5 A 6 A 7 A 8 A 9 Excerpt of the questionnaire management of a process aware questionnaire configurator prototype
3. The hierarchical agent structure of the PAC pattern for the questionnaire managment in figure 5 6 The hierarchical agent structure of the PAC pattern for the questionnaire managment using RCP 244 204 2e Ga EA sem as ee a id Welcome perspective of a process aware questionnaire configurator prototype Workspace perspective of a process aware questionnaire configurator pro Questionnaire configuration perspective of a process aware questionnaire configurator prototype a 2 nn nn Simple element builder of a process aware questionnaire configurator proto Adding a sensor for a complex element in a process aware questionnaire configurator prototype a aooo n a a e a Multimedia elements in a process aware questionnaire configurator prototype Questionnaire builder of a process aware questionnaire configurator prototype 51 52 54 61 62 62 63 63 64 64 65 65 1 Introduction Questionnaires are an inexpensive method to collect large amounts of data in rather short time Nowadays the creation of such questionnaires is supported by software applications called questionnaire configurators by providing an more or less extensive set of tools and mechanisms to manage a questionnaires life cycle If this life cycle is transferred to a process aware information system PAIS 25 common tasks like the questionnaire ex ecution could be automated and even extended 9
4. Figure A 7 Adding a sensor for a complex element in a process aware questionnaire con figurator prototype 64 Q Questionnaires 12 12 2013 16 34 h ze Drug Addiction Revision ee Last edad 12 12 2013 163 h Figure A 9 Questionnaire builder of a process aware questionnaire configurator prototype 65 Bibliography 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 ARNIM SCHINDLER Technische Konzeption und Realisierung des MACE Tests mittels mobiler Technologie University Ulm 2013 ATTESLANDER Peter Methoden der empirischen Sozialforschung 10 neubearb und erw Aufl Berlin Walter de Gruyter 2003 De Gruyter Studienbuch ISBN 9783503093212 BABBIE Earl R Survey research methods 2nd ed Belmont and Calif Wadsworth Pub Co 1990 ISBN 9780534981969 BOARDHOST COM INC Pollcode http pollcode com visited 2014 03 28 BURKE Bill RESTful Java with JAX RS Sebastopol and CA O Reilly 2010 ISBN 0596158041 CARSTEN SCHMITZ LimeSurvey Manual 2014 http manual limesurvey org index php title LimeSurvey_Manual amp oldid 59930 visited 2014 03 28 CHRISTOPHER G LASATER Design Patterns Jones amp Bartlett Learning 2010 ECLIPSE FOUNDATION Eclipse documentation Current Release Eclipse Kepler http help eclipse org kepler index jsp visited 2014 03 28 FABIAN MAIER Entwicklung eines mobilen und S
5. ISBN 3540729887 LANZ Andreas WEBER Barbara REICHERT Manfred Time patterns for process aware information systems In Requirements Engineering 2012 http dx doi org 10 1007 s00766 012 0162 3 DOI 10 1007 s00766 012 0162 3 ISSN 0947 3602 MAXIMILIAN XAVER SCHMID Technische Konzeption und Realisierung der Anwen derumgebung fur ein generisches Fragebogensystem zur IT gest tzten Durchf hrung von evaluierten Studien der Klinischen Psychologie University Ulm 2012 MCAFFER Jeff LEMIEUX Jean Michel ANISZCZYK Chris Eclipse Rich Client Platform 2nd ed Upper Saddle River and NJ Addison Wesley 2010 The eclipse series ISBN 9780321603784 MCCOLL E JACOBY A THOMAS L Health technology assessment Bd vol 5 no 31 Design and use of questionnaires A review of best practice applicable to sur veys of health service staff and patients National Co ordinating Centre for HTA Great Britain 2001 MICROSOFT Rich Text Format RTF Specification 1 7 2003 PORST Rolf Fragebogen Ein Arbeitsbuch 1 Aufl Wiesbaden VS Verl fur Sozialwiss 2008 Lehrbuch ISBN 3531908979 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 Bibliography R FOUNDATION An Introduction to http www r project org visited 2014 03 28 RAAB STEINER Elisabeth BENESCH Michael UTB Schl sselkompetenzen Bd 8406 Der Fragebogen Von der Forschungsidee zur SP
6. A menu hosts a set of submenus and simple entries called items An item holds function ality which is executed whenever it is selected This item functionality is declared directly in aclass or through commands With commands a declarative description of the function ality is created independently from its implementation For the concrete implementation a handler which holds the uniform resource identifier URI of the executable class is linked to the command 24 The benefit of commands and handler lays in a flexible access to the implementation of functionality Several commands can point to the same handler and 16 2 3 Eclipse Rich Client Platform several handler can be linked to the same class Commands and handler are accessed pro grammatically at runtime through the services ECommandService and EHandlerService as mentioned in section 2 3 1 E Questioneer Tables Trees Part Stack Part Figure 2 4 An RCP workbench example including a window with a menu tool bar part stack and three parts Tool bars are similar to menus but avoid nested items A tool bar displays items as a blank spot an image a text or an image with text depending on the information available To avoid this predefined behaviour a tool bar can be replaced or extended by a tool control With a tool control a simple canvas is provided which is filled arbitrary to display a status bar for example The most important controls are parts They cons
7. Persistence File Format lO Configuration File Figure 5 1 Core components of the architecture of a process aware questionnaire config urator 5 1 1 User Interface Components As shown in figure 5 1 there are six user interface components Workspace Management Questionnaire Management Element Builder Questionnaire Builder Preview and Dia logues The Workspace Management component provides a graphical management layer for a set of questionnaires This management layer is expressed via workspaces which are logical containers for the categorisation and ordering of questionnaires Each workspace has a title and a description offering the possibility to provide information about the included questionnaires their purposes and aims Furthermore functionality to share a workspace or forward it to other users is provided by an explicit management of rights Every user man 40 5 1 Core Components ages for all self created workspaces a set of authorised users and their regarding rights Authorised users obtain the right to read or modify the content of a workspace whereas the owner has the supplementary right to delete it and manage the set of authorised users The questionnaires within a workspace are handled by the Questionnaire Management component Besides the finalised and executable questionnaires corresponding ques tionnaire pages and elements configuration settings comprehensive properties and the supported languages are
8. face components can lay in the hands of the user an ad hoc component registration can increase the complexity of the application and cause redundant registration calls A core requirement of most RCP applications is to offer extensibility With the flexible and on several layers extensible generic questionnaire model as described in section 4 2 this is of particular concern e g a new questionnaire element has to be included Because the entire RCP is based on an OSGi environment extensibility is offered through plugins Every plugin bundles a set of functionality and makes it available through extension points Therefore the configurator can be extended by simply including and accessing required plu gins Moreover functionality can be developed and used independently from a specific ap plication To access plugins programmatically RCP provides an add on mechanism which allows the manipulation of plugins and their dependencies before the application starts Therefore event handler are connected to different states of the application s user interface life cycle e g APP_STARTUP_COMPLETE Consider a configurator which holds all rel evant text labels of the application in a single plugin for each language Resulting from that new languages can be dynamically added by developing new language plugins All 59 5 Architecture and Implementation these language plugins are read before the user interface is generated and therefore are avai
9. user up to date This is exactly the task of the Status Information Updater component de scribed in section 5 1 2 but independently from a user interface which therefore benefit from the subject observer structure With a Factory pattern the creation of application constructs like questionnaire elements and pages is managed by factories The latter encapsulate the creating logic of an con struct also called product in a central location Resulting from that initialisation pro cedures are not spread across the application and can therefore be adjusted faster and less error prone Moreover supplementary management functionality is integrable A fac tory can operate as a repository by saving the references to every created product and with that perform comprehensive tasks Consider for example a factory which encapsu lates the creating logic of every questionnaire element Every time an element is created a reference is saved in this element factory If the user requires an overview of the created elements since application start e g to validate that every required element has been cre ated successfully the element factory can provide a list of created elements by analysing the saved references and extracting the necessary data In the developed configurator prototype product repositories are available in the persistence components Every created element needs to be stored and therefore referenced by the persistence module
10. 5 4 Usage of the Rich Client Platform The Rich Client Platform as described in section 2 3 supports JAVA application developers by offering functionality for common tasks With the RCP workbench and the RCP applica tion model see section 2 3 2 and 2 3 3 a window management tool is provided for graph ical software applications The application is divided into windows defining their nested view areas Several constructs to manage these view areas especially RCP perspectives RCP part stacks and RCP parts see section 2 3 3 can be declared and accessed through specific services at runtime In section 5 3 the PAC pattern is described to present a structure for interactive software systems Figure 5 8 shows an approach to integrate the RCP application model to the PAC structure of a process aware questionnaire configurator as shown in figure 5 7 Basically every user interface component in figure 5 8 the Questionnaires Management component is used exemplary is packed into an RCP part Each of these RCP parts is then linked to an RCP perspective which is anon linked to an RCP window With this structure the 93 5 Architecture and Implementation arrangement of all view areas provided by the user interface components is defined in a central and independent place RCP Application Model Top level agent RCP Application Intermediate level agent RCP Window Intermediate level agent RCP Perspective Intermediate level agent RCP Part
11. Questionnaires are used in a wide area of applications including marketing research em ployee feedback recording medical backgrounds etcetera Data can be collected anony mously and through different channels e g pen and paper based or internet based with out the mandatory presence of an interviewer Furthermore questionnaire configurators and therefore software applications offer supplementary tools to integrate multime dia content share questionnaires online store results centrally analyse results and many more In addition computer supported questionnaires can be beneficial if the survey topic is computer related 29 in the first place As a result feature rich configurators are of great concern for any kind of data collection and therefore of high commercial interest With the access to PAIS functionality a configurator is extended by several strong features like au tomatic questionnaire execution or access rights through organisational models which are already available and do not require an implementation from scratch 1 2 Summary of Contribution The main contribution of this thesis is an approach for an extensible and flexible process aware questionnaire configurator This includes initially an analysis of consistent ques tionnaire parts and extensions A generic model which describes the structure of every possible questionnaire is extracted and discussed regarding its similarities to a process model On this b
12. RCP Service yo A Intermediate level agent Overview of Questionnaires PAC pattern Function call Intermediate level agent Questionnaire Dialogue Function call Event Function call Event Function call Event Bottom level agent Bottom level agent Bottom level agent Description Dialogue Dependency Dialogue Operations Dialogue Figure 5 8 The hierarchical agent structure of the PAC pattern for the questionnaire man agment using RCP Figure 5 8 shows an example of an RCP application which displays the user interface com ponent Questionnaire Management as seen in figure 5 6 Firstly an RCP window has to be defined including a related RCP perspective with one RCP part Secondly the size is defined by declaring an RCP window size and an RCP part size which is a relative value to the size of the RCP window The arrangement of view areas is dispensable with only one RCP part Finally the RCP part is mapped to the Questionnaire Management compo nent by providing a view area in RCP through an object called Composite which can be filled arbitrary Because RCP parts provide comprehensive functionality for their content they interact transferred to the PAC pattern like a layer of intermediate agents Nested 54 5 4 Usage of the Rich Client Platform components are able to access the superior RCP part with the available RCP services in this case the EPartService as described in section 2 3 1 and 2 3 3 Every RCP part
13. database Because not every manipulated object requires to be stored immediately on the remote database the wrapper layer as seen in figure 5 5 has to provide a queue A queue holds track of every manipulated object and transfers finalised objects to the database This transmission can depend on the state change of an object or is triggered by a timer To keep track of the states all objects in the queue are tagged with a state like LOCAL_ONLY for an object which is temporarily stored locally READY_FOR_ TRANSMISSION for an object ready to be stored in the database IN_WORK for an object which is in use and therefore is not stored yet etcetera With the termination of the application this states and their related objects have to be stored The Configuration File Handler component therefore saves this mapping in an extra file which is read at every application start The offline storage of the objects uses the same data structure as on the server to avoid redundant source code The definition which content is stored in a single file is arbitrary but to ensure a clear file system it is beneficial to nest the content of every workspace into an own file This file has to match the structure on the remote server for example a Structured Query Language Data file for a SQL database To ensure data integrity between the offline and online data set a priority of significance needs to be defined At the start of the application all local data i
14. 27 29 29 Contents 6 7 4 2 A Technical View on Generic Questionnaires 4 3 Integration of Questionnaires in Process aware Information Systems 4 3 1 Constraints within Questionnaires Architecture and Implementation 5 1 Core COMPONENIS 42 4 3444 0 LS DSTI AG LARMES a SNL ed 5 1 1 User Interface Components 5 1 2 Background Components 5 2 P ISISIENES 2 2262 46 2 2 ne euere RSS S 5 2 1 Direct Database Connection 5 2 2 Web Services cuicos a EN ais Rip ke M EO 9 2 3 OUMA e 20 ane rc tm mn nn Se E 5 3 Design Patterns 226240206 e282 AD DEES ds Lio da 5 4 Usage of the Rich Client Platform 5 5 SUMMARY ts A rsh ik ee Ba Be eds Conclusion Future Work A The Process aware Questionnaire Configurator Prototype Bibliography vi 39 39 40 43 46 47 49 49 50 53 96 97 59 61 67 List of Figures 2 1 2 2 2 3 2 4 2 5 3 1 3 2 3 3 3 4 4 1 4 2 4 3 4 4 5 1 5 2 5 3 5 4 5 9 Filter including the questions from example 1 3 ADEPT2 example for an ordering process Overview of important RCP components An RCP workbench example including a window with a menu tool bar part Stack and three parts The internal steps for building a workbench
15. DE Personiche Einstehungen US Personal set Last ected 12 12 2013 16 34 h Button for Configuration de DE anus Template for Revision gt Button for General setfiegs aE Y deDE ile Requirement Y onus v deve Y wus Last eated Figure A 4 Questionnaire configuration perspective of a process aware questionnaire con figurator prototype Q Questionnaires D S Simple elements 12 12 2013 10341 J Simple elements Drug Addiction Revision v deDE How old ere you Y nus Question type Single choire o Last edited f 12 12 2013 1634A Answer items 1m 16 O PO PO Template for Revision 2 2 Mom 17 28 3 Nam 29 45 4 Y we P Prevew Language end Y enus Y on Y paar How old are you Y E o 16 017 28 029 45 046 60 S Y sw Last atag 12 12 2013 16 34 h Figure A 5 Simple element builder of a process aware questionnaire configurator prototype 63 A The Process aware Questionnaire Configurator Prototype 1 i Further Tita 1 Template for Revision 22 Element 4 Further Details Be aad sensor Element 5 Help Figure A 6 Complex element builder of a process aware questionnaire configurator prototype Template for Revision lt How old are you o 16 oi 28 029 45 046 60
16. Information Updater component An object registers itself to one of the available data sources and is in formed every time the state of this data source changes such an object is therefore called a receiver In contrast objects are able to take over the functionality to trigger changes by registering themselves as a sender With the sender functionality tool bars are feasible in addition to status bars Another component to ease usability is the Protocol A protocol saves actions from a user and automatically creates reverse actions to undo the origin ones Therefore an intern called method is mapped to a set of methods required to reset the functionality of the initial method call With every undo call the set of undo methods for an action is executed successively As a result the user is able to undo or redo taken actions like inserting a question page into a questionnaire The Element Placer Connector Creator and Graph Operations components are especially relevant for the graphical modelling environment of the Questionnaire Builder component Figure 5 3 shows an excerpt from the modelling environment of a process aware ques tionnaire prototype based on the design approach of 32 On the right of figure 5 3 the available and categorised elements are located and placed depending on the available space of the right view area with the Element Placer component The latter places a set of elements as space saving as possible on a de
17. The application is based on a tree structure which represents the hierarchical order of every questionnaire as shown in figure 3 3 Each leaf defines a section which bundles a set of questions SurveyGold distinguishes between single and multiple choice question types and offers filter functionality for the former With filter re sults are mapped to sections which will be executed immediately after the filter question is answered or directly to the end of the questionnaire The specific order of questions besides an introduction text and properties regarding the graphical representation is de fined in sections A set of sections is assigned to exactly one survey A survey belongs to a user defined folder and determines the list of respondents e g for an email survey and which personal user data should be collected With an additional property page breaks 24 3 2 Desktop Applications are automatically inserted after every section Through export functions a survey can be transformed into a plain text a Microsoft Word or a web format when you re finished click the Exit button Hope the rest of your evening is great SE Survey Templates 8 coem Tr Ee Customer Satisfaction How would you rate your overall satisfaction with our Yes About Purchasing products How often do yout 8 How likely are you to continue using our products Yes 4 our Opinion Q Have you ever recommended our products to others es How
18. consider a questionnaire as a process and therefore uses the rich functionality of process aware information systems PAIS With this thesis such an approach for process aware questionnaire configurators is devel oped and implemented for the first time Initially all characteristics of a questionnaire are extracted collected and transferred into a generic questionnaire model which describes every questionnaire by providing a clear basis structure with extension points on several layers This model is integrated into the process structure of a PAIS by mapping question naire pages to activities and filter to branches To validate this approach a process aware questionnaire configurator is implemented and in excerpts used to define an architecture for further implementations This should pave the way for approaches which integrate a PAIS into a questionnaire configurator but aim to use different PAIS functionality or PAIS functionality in a different way With the automatic execution of process aware question naires only an excerpt from the capabilities of a PAIS is used A PAIS is still a research topic but with the integration in a configurator environment every upcoming feature may offer another beneficial functionality for questionnaires A few features whose integration into questionnaires is not considered yet are presented and described in more detail in chapter 7 57 6 Conclusion 58 7 Future Work In this thesis the executi
19. displayed The latter determine the languages in which the fin ished questionnaire can be executed Because the languages affect all corresponding questionnaire elements with a multi language part the use of a specific input mask is ben eficial Instead of manipulating every related element with a multi language part only the input mask changes when the supported languages of a questionnaire are varied If a multi language element is modified a form which includes the input mask is generated displayed and manipulatable through a user interface With the input mask for languages navigation instruments are defined as well Labels of buttons to navigate to the next or previous question page for example are required in the chosen language This configura tion of navigation instruments is defined in the configuration settings At last the properties represent the global properties of the generic questionnaire model as seen in section 4 2 Simple elements Editor Simple elements a Optional No Headline rigin Question Text Question de DE Wie alt sind Sie Media Image JOE Igi lo B HE O lo Deleted elements en UK How old are you amp Deleted Ea 3 El amp Question type Single choice X Answer items 1 Item 0 18 2 Item 19 30 Figure 5 2 Excerpt of the element builder environment of a process aware questionnaire configurator prototype W
20. proach is presented which outsources tasks to functionality provided by a process aware information system PAIS To offer extensibility for up coming needs a generic questionnaire model is the basis for an integra tion of a PAIS into a questionnaire configurator environment The result is called a process aware questionnaire configurator and is discussed re garding its architecture and implementation With an implemented proto type of a process aware questionnaire configurator an insight is granted into a concrete implementation based on the Eclipse Rich Client Plat form Contents 1 Introduction 1 1 1 2 Motivation Summary of Contribution Fundamentals 2 1 2 2 2 3 Questionnaires 2 1 1 Definitions 2 1 2 Measuring Scales 2 1 3 Elements 2 1 4 Construction of a Questionnaire Process aware Workflow 2 2 1 Activities o se ari ara Bee 2 2 2 Data Elements 2 2 3 Branches vdd we Sa 2 2 4 Loops Eclipse Rich Client Platform 2 3 1 RCP Components 2 3 2 RCPWorkbench 2 3 3 RCP Application Model Related Work 3 1 3 2 3 3 3 4 Web based Applications Desktop Applications Mobile Applications SUMMARY oo MASSE Process aware Questionnaires 4 1 Requirements on the PAIS environment 10 11 12 13 13 14 16 18 21 21 24 26
21. the item list is extracted from the order If all items are available they will be packed and dispatched to the customer Pack and dispatch otherwise the customer is informed that the order can not be handled nform customer Depending on the companies size in this example the activity Pack and dis patch could be an entire subprocess for the logistics department For the simplicity it is handled as a simple task in this case Each activity has a list of preconditions Only if all preconditions are fulfilled the activity is ready for execution Since there may be more than one activity ready for execution at a time and because of the need to provide an overview of the process progress each activity has a state There are the four distinguishable super states waiting running terminated and skipped which define the general purpose of a set of sub states The super state waiting holds the sub states of an activity which waits to be executed If all preconditions are met an activity changes its state from the sub state not activated to the sub state activated Not activated represents the initial state of all activities An authorised user can select one of the activated activities which changes thus from activated to selected After being selected an activity is automatically assigned to a sub state of the super state running A running activity performs its task by setting it to the sub state started If there are any interruptions during the task
22. the state changes to suspended If the task of an activity is finished or aborted the sub states of the super state terminated are used for the activity For finishing a task successfully the sub state completed is assigned for aborting failed The last super state contains a special case for conditional branches If a path is not selected the attached activities are unable to run This is marked by the state skipped Dependencies between two activities are defined by the control flow The control flow is presented as unilateral control flow edges which link activities branches and loops A link between such two constructs defines a precedence relation In figure 2 2 the activity Take customer order has to be terminated before the activity Check availability of items is activated 2 2 2 Data Elements Data elements are global process variables which enable the data exchange between activities The only two data elements in the ordering process example of figure 2 2 are Item list and isAvailable Data elements are accessed via data flow edges in contrast to 11 2 Fundamentals the control flow edges presented as dashed links If an activity writes a data element a unilateral data flow edge leads from the activity to the data element describing that the data element is now connected to the activity Alternatively reading a data element is defined by a unilateral data flow edge leading from the data element to the activity For an activity
23. to the status skipped as described in section 2 2 1 For such a decision a data element see section 2 2 2 is read and based on the dimension value ranges are mapped to the following paths In the ordering process example the simple boolean value from isAvailable is read to determine which path for the further execution is chosen If all items are available the value t rue Is written to the data element isAvailable True is mapped to the upper path of the XOR branch and activates the activity Pack and dispatch whereas false activates the activity Inform customer 12 2 3 Eclipse Rich Client Platform AND splits divide the path into multiple paths Activities of all paths are executed indepen dently If the XOR branch from the ordering process example would be replaced by an AND branch the activity Pack and dispatch as well as Inform customer are executed 2 2 4 Loops Although processes can be repeated several times loops are of great concern In many cases only parts of a process have to be repeated and the number of iterations is deter mined during runtime As already described in section 2 2 a loop is represented by exactly one start and one end node If the end node is activated the condition for the next loop it eration is evaluated Regarding the ordering process example a loop is useful if a customer has several orders Each order will be processed successively Therefore the fragment of the process which is nes
24. 2 5 shows the graphical editor is only the first step but the only one the user has to handle Within a tree structure win dows and related perspectives are defined parts are created and arranged and properties are set Every time the user makes such a change the entire presentation is automatically transformed into the internal EMF XMI format in the background see step two in figure 2 5 At startup the meta model is extracted from the XMI file and classes representing the 3The Extensible Markup Language is a declarative language to express hierarchical structured data 18 2 3 Eclipse Rich Client Platform workbench elements are generated by the RCP runtime environment Shown in step three In step four the generated code is executed and the workbench is displayed as defined in step one If extensive changes are made to the application model during runtime steps two to four are repeated With the help of the service EModelService workbench elements can be accessed and therefore for example added deleted and replaced 8 Not only the workbench user interface elements itself but also commands and handler are created in the application model The definition of dependencies between commands handler and classes follows a uniform resource identifier pattern which adds a supple mentary separation between classes and all other resources To refer to a class the prefix bundleclass is used for resources like images or fonts the prefix pl
25. 5 2 analyses the storage of data in more detail To restrict the user as little as possible the advantages of a remote server and local files to save the data are combined in a hybrid approach Furthermore design patterns like the Presentation Abstraction Control pattern which provide a better cohesiveness and code clarity are discussed in section 5 3 These are complemented by the available functionality provided by RCP for common programming tasks in partic ular considering a configurator environment e g portability or extensibility This chapter therefore paves the way for a concrete and complete configurator implementation 56 6 Conclusion Questionnaires are a fast method to collect data in empiric research Much study in the recent years focused on the versatile aspects of questionnaires reaching from wording 27 over graphical representations 21 to element structures 2 14 With advancing online connectivity and mobile accessibility technical aspects of questionnaires are of growing in terest Additional features to ease the process of managing a questionnaire like distributing questionnaires via email making them accessible through the internet or working on them collaboratively from different places are provided by software applications A large number of these questionnaire configurator applications are available six of them are described in chapter 3 with a different scope of functionality None of these configurators
26. Although questionnaires have been extensively studied in the last decades the focus lays primarily on structural 2 14 repre sentational 21 and content related 2 27 aspects disregarding the technical view Avail able configurators are mostly proprietary software applications tailored to the specific needs of a target group and unavailable for research purposes This thesis therefore develops an approach which integrates PAIS functionality in a questionnaire configurator and validates the resulting benefits by implementing a process aware questionnaire configurator for the first time Therefore the sociological fundamentals of questionnaires and technical aspects of a PAIS are outlined in chapter 2 This includes an overview of the Rich Client Platform RCP as well which is used for the implementation of a prototype of a process aware questionnaire configurator In chapter 3 existing questionnaire configurators are analysed to create a generic questionnaire model in chapter 4 The latter defines the basic construction pattern of every questionnaire and catches deviating characteristics through extension points Af terwards this generic model is transferred to the ADEPT2 PAIS theoretically and then in chapter 5 practically For the practical realisation an architecture is provided which dis cusses important components aligns them with well known design patterns and enriches them by RCP functionality 1 Introduction 1 1 Motivation
27. Dialogue Handler provides comprehensive functionality regarding the creation of neces sary objects e g another window for calculations for the required dialogue position e g 43 5 Architecture and Implementation window centred or predefined and for displaying several dialogues at once Even func tionality affecting the visual appearance like the use of transparency or behaviour of com mon dialogue parts like the initial focus are adjustable through such a dialogue handler Because the Dialogue Handler provides only support functionality for user interface com ponents and is not part of any user interactions it belongs to the category of background components With a Version Control component different versions of an object are tracked and saved A simple questionnaire element for example can be modified several times and included into several finalised questionnaires If a questionnaire has reached the state finalised it is put into practice and therefore going to be executed by respondents In this state the questionnaire is immutable to avoid divergent and not comparable answers Nevertheless parts of the questionnaires are required in other questionnaires as well and may demand adjustments To modify an element which is nested into a finalised questionnaire versions are needed With versions different editing states of an object are available at the same time Versions are immutable to provide data integrity but offer the fun
28. Inform customer Every activity defines a task or an entire nested process called a subprocess and has different states defining its behaviour see section 2 2 1 Solid edges represent the control flow and dashed edges the data flow Through data edges an activity can read or write data elements like the tem list in figure 2 2 The functionality of data elements in ADEPT2 will be discussed in more detail in section 2 2 2 Branches operate with the boolean logic AND or XOR They decide which activity or activity sequence is executed next see section 2 2 3 Finally loops are intro duced in section 2 2 4 They define parts of the process which should be executed more than once during one process instance depending on data processed within the instance With AristaFlow a software environment for a process aware information system is available which is based on the ADEPT workflow technology 2 2 1 Activities An activity represents a simple task or an entire subprocess A simple task can involve sending or receiving an email opening or closing a form reading or writing data etcetera Figure 2 2 describes a process for a mail order company by the use of the four activities Take customer order Check availability of items Pack and dispatch and Inform customer After the arrival of a customer order Take customer order the availability of the items is 10 2 2 Process aware Workflow checked Check availability of items Therefore
29. SS Auswertung 3 aktual isierte und berarb Aufl Wien Facultas Verl 2012 ISBN 978 3 8252 8496 1 RALF EBERT Eclipse RCP Entwicklung von Desktop Anwendungen mit der Eclipse Rich Client Platform 3 7 2011 REICHERT Manfred DADAM Peter Enabling adaptive process aware information systems with ADEPT2 In Handbook of research on business process modeling pp 173 203 2009 SAS SAS STAT 13 1 Users Guide htto support sas com documentation onlinedoc stat 131 statug pdf visited 2014 03 28 SCHOLL Armin UTB Bd 2413 Die Befragung 2 Uberarb Aufl Konstanz UVK Verl Ges 2009 ISBN 3825224139 SEBASTIAN JEHLE Technische Konzeption und Realisierung der Konfiguratorumge bung fur ein generisches Fragebogensystem zur IT gest tzten Durchf hrung von evaluierten Studien der Klinischen Psychologie University Ulm 2012 SENKBEIL Martin IHME Jan M Wie valide sind Papier und Bleistift Tests zur Erfas sung computerbezogener Kompetenzen In Diagnostica 60 2014 Nr 1 pp 22 34 http dx doi org 10 1026 0012 1924 a000114 DOI 10 1026 0012 1924 a000114 ISSN 0012 1924 STATPAC INC StatPac For Windows Users Manual http www statpac com download Manual pdf visited 2014 03 28 STEFANIE WINTER Quantitative vs Qualitative Methoden Karlsruhe 2000 http imihome imi uni karlsruhe de nquantitative_vs_ qualitative _methoden_b html visited 2014 03 28 STEFFEN SCHERLE Konzeption und Eva
30. a finished and runnable product 8 The Standard Widget Toolkit SWT and the JFace toolkit create a uniform user interface throughout different operating systems by using native user interface widgets SWT repre sents a low level abstraction layer for the user interface facilities of the operation system It offers the essential functionality to display user interface elements like buttons text fields canvas etcetera JFace appends supplementary registries for images and fonts and pro vides frameworks for dialogues preferences and wizards Furthermore the handling with SWT is simplified with JFace Concepts as viewers let user interface widgets be supplied by data from model objects These model objects are called adapters and offer especially advantages for more complex data structures like lists tables or trees 12 The Dependency Injection belongs to the programming model of RCP 4 If an object refer ences another object via dependency injection the reference is not resolved until runtime Therefore the referenced object is stored at a central place in RCP the EclipseContext class and injected at the time the referencing object is instantiated If the referenced ob ject is not available e g because it was not created or stored yet an error occurs and the 15 2 Fundamentals instantiation of the object fails In RCP the injected objects are tracked and if they change they can be automatically re injected 35 Another impor
31. alogues and dialogue templates Furthermore status and tool bars provide relevant information throughout the entire application All in all the user interface components are designed to guide the user in four steps through the creation of a questionnaire First of all a workspace which defines the general topic is set up with the Workspace Management component Afterwards a new questionnaire Is created in this workspace with the use of the Questionnaire Management component Re quired languages are adjusted navigation instruments are labelled and general information are entered Then elements and pages are created which should occur in the new ques tionnaire by using the Element Builder Finally this pages and elements are assembled to an executable questionnaire with the functionality provided by the Questionnaire Builder Each of these components require background components to process and store the data of the user input which are therefore described in section 5 1 2 5 1 2 Background Components The Dialogue Handler Version Control Perspective Handler Protocol Element Placer Connector Creator Graph Operations Status Information Updater Multi language Support component and the persistence components belong to the background components as shown in figure 5 1 The Dialogue Handler component is responsible for the management of dialogues see the Dialogue component in section 5 1 1 Because of the wide variety of dialogues the
32. and online questionnaires As described in definition 1 questionnaires provide analysable measurable data Depending on the question this data can be inter preted more or less precisely see section 2 1 2 To fulfil this goal a set of elements see section 2 1 3 is necessary Besides questions text and media fragments are important parts of a questionnaire These elements are ordered to determine a sequence through the questionnaire A modification of the sequence is possible through filters see section 2 1 4 First of all section 2 1 1 covers the basic vocabulary to work with questionnaires 2 1 1 Definitions Questionnaires gather data and interpret this data to obtain information Processable and therefore interpretable and meaningful data has four properties It is valid reliable rep resentative and unbiased 19 23 These properties are discussed using the following definitions Definition 2 Validity A study has a high validity if the results allow only a unique interpretation 23 Valid data has a high content related expressiveness Definition 3 Reliablity The repeatability of an instrument 27 Reliability describes the fact that an extracted result is constant through several repeated experiments Reliable data requires always a representative number of samples Definition 4 Representative Random samples are representative if their characteristic reflect the characteristic of the entire populat
33. answer items are determined For example the question type ranking question allows the user to arrange the single answer items to a preferred order An user defined order is an user input where every answer item is attached to a new index and therefore to a number As an example consider a ranking question where a respondent should order the four choices Teacher Policeman Politician and Reporter by appreciation A fifth choice is a free text field called Other allowing the respondent to enter and order a fifth profession Consider an constraint to filter answers which had cho sen the fifth free text answer item Furthermore the entered profession should contain the word Fireman and take the first position in the order chosen by the respondent The cor responding constraint is described by 5 Other CONTAINS Fireman 1 Fora single choice question where a respondent can only choose between static text strings only the lt answer items gt fragment is required to form constraints Furthermore the lt answer items gt expression only contains a single answer item the item selected by the respondent 36 4 3 Integration of Questionnaires in Process aware Information Systems All in all a constraint is reducible to a selection of answer items for which a set of operators define a value or a value range The data types can therefore be created inclusive reading and writing edges fully automatically 37 4 Process aware Que
34. asis an approach is developed to represent this generic model as a spe cial kind of process and therefore use PAIS functionality to support a questionnaire s life cycle With an architecture including components design patterns and a development plat form a recommendation for an implementation is provided and validated by an exemplary prototype for a process aware questionnaire configurator This paves the way for thin questionnaire configurators which outsource functionality to existing applications From a general point of view a new challenge is transferred to an existing problem for which a solution is already available 2 Fundamentals A configuration system for process aware questionnaires requires the merge of research areas from two diverse domains On the one hand psychology knowledge regarding the structure and construction of questionnaires on the other hand a profound technical un derstanding of process aware information systems In the following sections we cover the requirements for a fundamental understanding of both branches Special focus lays on the technical aspects In section 2 1 questionnaires are analysed regarding their construction and relevant parts Afterwards in section 2 2 the fundamentals of process aware workflows are covered The content of section 2 1 and section 2 2 is required for the approach of a process aware questionnaire in chapter 4 Section 2 3 gives an insight to the Eclipse Rich Client Platform whic
35. ated path in this case the upper path is chosen and within the upcoming activities and their included elements Because every element belongs to a question page the page construct has to be mapped to the PAIS as well One possibility to present pages lays in subprocesses For every page a subprocess is defined which holds a sequence of activities equal to the sequence of elements Another possibility is provided by special activities determining the start and the end of a page as shown in figure 4 3 Both approaches are possible but contradict the meaning of a ques tionnaire page A page holds a set of elements which is displayed as a whole and allows the respondent to decide which elements are considered and manipulated first This free element handling is not natively mappable to a PAIS Further functionality would have to be added like bidirectional control flow edges or iterative transactional sequences 34 4 3 Integration of Questionnaires in Process aware Information Systems Age Smoker Page A QN r SE History of A Smoking e d Age lt 16 AND N e YM y Smoker True Page Age and Smoking Question 1 Question Page Page Figure 4 4 Example for a process aware questionnaire at page level A more appropriate approach is based on the mapping of the page layer to a PAIS As shown in figure 4 4 every activity represents a question page and therefore an entire set of elements in a specific order Each el
36. atform Furthermore bindings and addons are declared in the application model Bindings define which key combinations have a special function in a defined context Addons are global ob jects which are managed by the dependency injection framework With addons additions and changes to the application are possible in a very early stage Because addons are called before the workbench is rendered changes to the user interface are feasible 35 19 2 Fundamentals 20 3 Related Work Questionnaires are a rather inexpensive method to gather a large amount of data in short time The analysis of this data is mostly done automatically by statistical software like R 22 SAS 26 and SPSS 11 Even for paper based questionnaires these tools can be used by transforming the written answers into a digital representation Regarding the used measuring scales see section 2 1 2 the statistical software is able to provide more or less complex methods to automatically extract information from the answers given Besides the automation of the data analysis the procedure of data collection itself can be automated as well Based on a set of required elements as described in section 2 1 3 a questionnaire can be constructed see section 2 1 4 Software applications that are able to create such a questionnaire are called questionnaire configurators In the sec tions 3 1 to 3 3 an excerpt from the large pool of questionnaire configurators is described ord
37. cription text for each question group and three global text fragments defining the description the welcome and end text for a survey Page breaks can not be defined explicitly but are automatically inserted after every question group LimeSurvey Administration Logged in as admin 837 BBB BE u 20 0 Survey test test ID 9809 E 4 2 CoE gt Question groups gl y gt Olx Question group gi ID 6 2 O QA 8 3 Questions 41 Is this working just fine Y ES Question Is this working just fine ID 5 NO BBC hh A B Dx Edit question Save Save and close Dutch Base language English German informal Code yl Question 3 9 a aj AlE E soc BOA PBF U mm xX ji 2 EN wji 2B jg 7 Styles Format Font Size z Bee A ra Is this working just fine Figure 3 2 The LimeSurvey questionnaire configurator The concept to control the application focuses on a hierarchical tool bar structure As shown in figure 3 2 the topmost tool bar holds the administration tools e g user management database export and backup plugin framework style editor where a survey can be created or chosen from a list If a survey is selected a survey tool bar is displayed under the 23 3 Related Work administration tool bar offering functionality for the global survey settings e g ordering the question groups to a questionnaire or executing a test run Based on the same pri
38. ctionality to load the versions content manipulate it and save it as a new version Therefore not the entire object with all its versions is referenced but a single version of the object Besides the simple elements complex elements questionnaires and workspaces require a version control as well and resulting from that every user interface component except Dialogues The Perspective Handler component provides functionality for user interface components as well Every window consists of a variety of view areas with distinct forms and input pos sibilities for user interaction Because the overview clarity suffers under a growing number of view areas sets of view areas which are shown at once are bundled in perspectives The latter require additional functionality to administrate the nested view areas For ex ample methods to initialise and dispose view areas are linked to a call to change the re cent perspective With a Perspective Handler comprehensive perspective mechanisms are therefore available Max Mustermann Drug addiction lt gt All changes saved Alcohol Figure 5 4 Status bar of a process aware questionnaire configurator prototype 44 5 1 Core Components To help the user to keep track of relevant information e g entered data through different perspective changes a status bar is beneficial as shown in figure 5 4 The functionality to feed this data from everywhere within the application is provided by the Status
39. d interview has to be performed at least a month later If this time dependency could be expressed via a PAIS the configurator is able to create questionnaires with additional constraint types All in all the combination of a questionnaire configurator with a PAIS is in the beginning stage In this thesis the useful and supporting functionality of a PAIS for a configurator is analysed in its basics but through several milestones the utilisation and integration is eased for further research 60 A The Process aware Questionnaire Configurator Prototype Offline Figure A 1 Welcome perspective of a process aware questionnaire configurator prototype 61 A The Process aware Questionnaire Configurator Prototype Drug addiction questionnaires about smoking alcohol and other drugs Gwer Ox ae cealed 19 12 2013 17 236 ipri ma 10 12 2013 1600 Drugs This survey nudes questionnaires about smoking sloahad and other drugs ER A tarimas 10 52 2013 Tl Figure A 2 Workspace perspective of a process aware questionnaire configurator prototype Figure A 3 Questionnaire perspective of a process aware questionnaire configurator prototype 62 Drug addiction Revision 2 Last edited 12 12 2013 16 34 h Ca Button tor Save and close de DE onus Speschem und abachikeilen Save ano dose Button for Save OP Speechern mis Sre Button tor Personal settings E
40. does our com 10 What are you suggestions for improving our products No About You 11 How does our company compare to other companies that offer Yes H 5 El Customer Satisfaction M ld Question Section Survey Folder Figure 3 3 The SurveyGold questionnaire configurator SurveyGold is a rather simple and limited configurator and stays therefore in direct contrast to StatPac 30 With this application the style of a survey is strictly separated from its content File Edit view Format Design E Mail Data Serwer Help Salaj ua C E ETE Times New Roman 12 B zju o 7 3 4 5 6 Y 5 g 10 n E 1 Whats your gender M Wake F Ferrak Right click on a line for help W Preview orto select a file or color Settings CELI SUEVET CREATION GIy BlankLine Text Intreduction text Radio Gender Figure 3 4 The StatPac questionnaire configurator 25 3 Related Work A so called codebook holds all questions with their answer options in figure 3 4 a codebook overview is shown on the right side with the questions Gender and Age The codebook can be created by manually adding the questions by using an existing file or the internal StatPac editor represented as a text editor on the left side in figure 3 4 Consider for example a Microsoft Word document which contains a fully styled questionnaire If this document is saved as rich text file 20 it can be viewed in the
41. e constraint sets to the data flow of a PAIS the third one defines it internally To avoid the complexity of the explicit data flow an automation of the data element creation with its cor responding data edges is necessary Constraints are defined and internally transformed into a hidden PAIS data flow Because only elements which collect user input in a ques tionnaire only elements of the type question can influence the sequence of upcoming pages and therefore define analysable constraints the four question categories single choice multiple choice ranking and distribution as seen in section 2 1 3 must be cre ated by fulfilling the following regular expression constraint lt answer items gt lt answer data type gt lt result data type gt x The construct lt answer items gt selects the answer items at least one for which the same comparative operators are applied The latter are defined via the expression lt answer data type gt which is required for free user inputs and distinguishes between text strings and numbers With numbers the comparative operators lt lt 4 gt gt are available whereby text strings focuses on search operators like CONTAINS The data type should be defined within the question s construction and therefore automatically resolved into the corresponding operators by the configurator With the last fragment lt result data type gt x additional manipulations of the
42. e PAIS environment as described in the next section 4 1 4 1 Requirements on the PAIS environment A PAIS is an environment for the entire life cycle of processes Questionnaires can be han dled as described in more detail in section 4 3 as a special type of process and therefore benefit from an expressive PAIS As a result the focus of this chapter lays on the integration of an questionnaire configurator in a PAIS rather than in the development of a new process life cycle environment which is particularly designed to fulfil the needs of questionnaires There are two fundamental approaches to combine a PAIS with questionnaire functionality 29 4 Process aware Questionnaires Firstly an integrated approach which extends an existing PAIS application by adding sup plementary graphical user interfaces and background functionality through a manipulation of the source code of a PAIS application Therefore an implementation of the PAIS has to be available and accessible This binds the questionnaire configurator directly to the further development of the PAIS and limits the technical realisation of a configurator In contrast the full functionality is accessible and avoids redundant source code fragments Consider for example a PAIS application which is based on RCP as described in section 2 3 and displays the configurator as a single RCP part of the user interface Although the part itself can be filled arbitrary regarding the underlyi
43. e Simple Object Access Protocol SOAP 13 36 A stored questionnaire can be downloaded from the middleware and executed via the client component which is available as web based and mobile applications 17 Create and Manage your Surveys Create singlechoice question with table layout Catalogue Freetext BSL 23 Symptoms Slider Single Choice Multiple Choice Language lag of question Classify question Name of quesbon Text of question Waehrend der letzten Woche Number of possible answers Select numeric start value German 7 available vema afan oromo Abkhazian Mar a Afrikaans Albanian Amhanc Arabic Armenian Assamese Aymara Click to label answer value corre Azerbaijani uberhaupt nicht Bashkir Basque Bengali bangla Bhutan Bihari B slama Breton Clear Form Update Language BSL 23 S 01 BSL 23 S 02 BSL 23 S 03 BSL 23 S 04 BSL 23_S_05 BSL 23 S 06 BSL 23_S_07 BSL 23 S 08 BSL 23 S 09 BSL 23 S 10 BSL 23 S 11 BSL 23 5 12 BSL 23 S 13 BSL 23 S 14 Demography Figure 3 1 The QuestionSys questionnaire configurator see 28 The configurator of GQS has a control concept focusing on Drag and Drop events The center of the application has a large drop area for several tasks as shown in figure 3 1 e g the content of a questionnaire is displayed by dragging it into the drop area To cre ate a questionnaire questions have to be defined and assigned to a grou
44. each connection to a data element is internal modelled as exactly one input or output parameter For example the activity Check availability of items holds one output parameter for the data element sAvailable and one input parameter for the data element Item list Besides primitive data elements like string integer double and boolean complex data elements e g arrays are supported and even user defined constructs e g SQL ResultSets are possible Regarding the ordering process example see figure 2 2 the list of items could be presented as a string comma separated item identifiers as array or as an entirely new construct Whereas isAvailable presents a simple boolean Constraints ensure the correctness of the data flow by for example checking if a data ele ment is written before it is read except for a data element which is marked as optional Furthermore versions of the data elements are managed by ADEPT2 Every write access adds a new version to the data element This can be necessary in many cases especially when parallel branches work on the same data elements requiring the same data start values 2 2 3 Branches Branches represent decisions during the runtime of a process instance Following the boolean logic XOR and AND splits cover different use cases for branches XOR splits decide which of the following paths should be the only one to be executed The activities of the non selected paths are transferred
45. egorise questions is to discriminate between open closed and hybrid questions Open questions allow respondents to express the answer in their own words No restrictions besides the wording of the question itself are imposed Afterwards researchers interpret and categorise these answers Closed questions define a Static set of replies Each respondent has to pick one or more replies which match the respondents opinion best The static sets of replies are a well known source of errors because every reply has to be exclusive and the entire set has to cover every possible answer In contrast closed questions can be interpreted fully automatically and therefore much faster than open questions 14 A hybrid question is a closed question where one or more replies are constructed like an open question These questions are used if the set of replies does not cover the respondent s answer 21 Another categorisation of questions is based on the tasks of the respondent Next to the widespread single choice and multiple choice questions ranking and distribution questions exist Whereas single choice and multiple choice questions simply prompt the respondent to pick from a set of replies ranking and distribution questions demand more interaction In ranking questions a set of replies has to be ordered e g by the importance or acceptance for the respondent Distribution questions instead define a pool of points which can be distributed to the availab
46. elated Work 28 4 Process aware Questionnaires In section 2 1 the questionnaire is introduced as a social research method for data col lection With most research focusing on the content of a questionnaire or the order of its elements like the ideal wording or the optimal placement of complex and sensitive ques tions the realisation of a flexible and generic questionnaire configurator is not immediately possible An approach is required which maps every possible questionnaire to a universal model or in other words a generic questionnaire model If this generic model is mapped to a PAIS the execution of a questionnaire could be automated and therefore simplified based on the idea of 9 and the design approach of 32 The goal of this chapter is to define such a generic questionnaire model to map it to a PAIS This approach focuses on a maximisation of PAIS support functionality for questionnaires on the one hand and on the minimisation of restrictions regarding the structure and content of questionnaires on the other hand In section 4 2 a generic questionnaire model is devel oped and presented This model is based on a three layer architecture defining a layer for the questionnaire its questionnaire pages and questionnaire elements In section 4 3 the generic model is mapped to a PAIS by linking activities to different layers of the model The result is defined as a process aware questionnaire and depending on the requirements on th
47. elop software 13 2 Fundamentals the Eclipse IDE and is still strongly connected With every major Eclipse IDE release comes a RCP release 18 The RCP content covered in this paper is related to the RCP 4 version In the following sections an overview of important basic RCP components is provided see section 2 3 1 Based on the plugin structure a set of basic functionality is available reaching from user interface components over structural models to back end functionality In section 2 3 2 the workbench component is described in more detail With the workbench and its elements the user interface for the front end user communication is rendered The logical model the latter is based on is called the application model and is outlined in section 2 3 3 The application model is a framework to generate a workbench dynamically and allow changes to the workbench model even at runtime 2 3 1 RCP Components Components bundle software functionality in frameworks In RCP every component except the OSGi runtime is build on plugins Most of the components consist of a very large number of plugins Plug in Development Oth licati lugi ther application plugins Environment PDE Workbench Application Model Dependency Injection Services JFace Eclipse Modeling Framework EMF Standard Widget Toolkit SWT OSGi Runtime Figure 2 3 Overview of important RCP components 14 2 3 Eclipse Rich Client Platform To separate
48. ement can write data elements by connecting the activity which includes the superior page with data elements If the same element oc curs several times in the same page special naming conventions like using a prefix which contains the related index of a page avoid confusion when executing the questionnaire Furthermore the activities exactly present the behaviour of an entire page In a ques tionnaire always a page in its entirely is displayed and therefore manipulable Only if the next or previous page is called the recent page is closed Transferred to the activities the manipulation of a page is a running task which is terminated by the respondent or in PAIS terms the authorised user The sequence of pages is defined by branches and their constraint sets identical to the element layer approach The third approach captures all questionnaire data in a single construct and links it to an activity Therefore the entire process only consists of this single activity Branches data elements and further activities are expendable because the page sequence is defined in the questionnaire construct and not with the use of the PAIS As a result the use of a PAIS is expendable in this approach 35 4 Process aware Questionnaires 4 3 1 Constraints within Questionnaires All three approaches to map the generic questionnaire model to a PAIS require constraint sets to determine the sequence of displayed pages The first two approaches transfer th
49. ended Be cause the overview of questionnaires contains mostly more than one questionnaire the change of size affects following questionnaires As a result the locations of the latter has to be recalculated Overview of Questionnaires Questionnaire Dialogue Description Dialogue Dependency Dialogue Operations Dialogue Lock questionnaire Figure 5 6 Excerpt of the questionnaire management of a process aware questionnaire configurator prototype Figure 5 7 shows the transformation of the questionnaire management from figure 5 6 to the multi agent structure defined by the PAC pattern The top level agent is the container of questionnaires which offers no user interfaces but comprehensive functionality to posi tion the questionnaire dialogues in a specific way e g with a predefined margin to avoid 51 5 Architecture and Implementation overlappings A questionnaire dialogue is an intermediate level agent which contains a description dependency and operations dialogue in form of a dependency to a bottom layer agent respectively The intermediate agent provides functionality to combine the bottom layer agents in a uniform construct and offers additional user interface aspects e g a border which separates between active and non active questionnaires With three bottom layer agents different user in and outputs are provided by independent user interfaces The communication to inferior layers is expressed as function call wh
50. ent to the survey At the end simple questions should be used as well to react to the loss of concentration during long surveys The complex and more relevant and sensible questions have to be placed between the start and the end elements To structure the questionnaire the use of thematic paragraphs and text passages is recommended as seen in section 2 1 3 27 2 2 Process aware Workflow A process describes a sequence of single activities to accomplish a predefined assignment The structure of a process features a clear definition of its activities and their dependen cies Complex dependencies between activities require special constructs like branches or loops which manipulate the sequence of activities during runtime Because a process is designed once and executed several times the term process instance is used for a single run All parts of a process which can be performed computerised are called a workflow and can be supported by process aware information systems PAIS The latter offer controls for the management of process instances e g the assignment of an authorised user to outstanding activities can be managed fully automatically Sections 2 2 1 2 2 4 provide an overview of the fundamental parts of a PAIS focusing on the example ADEPT2 25 The ADEPT2 PAIS covers all of the elementary functionality of a PAIS and enables additional operations for dynamic process evolution and ad hoc deviations The approach is based on a relaxed b
51. ereas events define the communication to superior layers as shown in figure 5 7 The architecture defined by the PAC pattern is expandable to all user interface components mentioned in section 5 1 Top level agent Overview of Questionnaires Function call Event Intermediate level agent Questionnaire Dialogue Function call Event Function call Event Function call Event Bottom level agent Bottom level agent Bottom level agent Description Dialogue Dependency Dialogue Operations Dialogue Figure 5 7 The hierarchical agent structure of the PAC pattern for the questionnaire man agment in figure 5 6 The Observer pattern is a behavioural pattern which focuses on unilateral dependencies between components One component is called the subject and states the object on which the observer components depend on Every time the subject changes all registered ob servers are notified This behaviour is especially relevant if data needs to be displayed or updated in real time In contrast to automatic polling the observers are independent from timers which pushes the next subject call and therefore require less hardware resources A common example is a status bar see figure 5 4 which displays information which are spread over different components Every time a component changes its information e g through a user input the status bar requires the new state as fast as possible to keep the 52 5 4 Usage of the Rich Client Platform
52. ered by its application type The chosen excerpt focuses on providing an overview of as heterogeneous as possible approaches In section 3 1 the web based applications Generic Questionnaire System and LimeSurvey are depicted in section 3 2 the desktop applications SurveyGold and StatPac and in section 3 3 the mobile application Pollcode The summary in section 3 4 aggregates the information from section 3 1 to 3 3 in a brief overview For descriptions of further configurator environments refer to 13 and 32 3 1 Web based Applications Web based questionnaire configurators constitute the largest number of configurator appli cations With a thin client application e g a browser remote server functionality is ac cessed and executed Because this functionality is based on one or more central servers thin clients require minimum hardware resources Moreover the scalability depends on the number of accessible servers 21 3 Related Work The Generic Questionnaire System GQS is one of these web based questionnaire appli cations It is the predecessor of the configurator prototype originated by this thesis GQS is a system consisting of the three components configurator middleware and client to cover the entire questionnaire life cycle With the configurator component questionnaires are constructed edited and deleted 28 To store the created questionnaires centrally the middleware component offers interfaces which can be accessed via th
53. ersist pro cessed data provided by user input through user interface components This application data can be stored as local files and on a remote server Because both approaches have different advantages a hybrid approach is beneficial and described in this section An off line storage saves data in specific file formats in local directories As a result the local files are accessible and manageable by the user and can be used for backups or to share them with other users if not restricted by the file format or an encrypted file content Fur thermore the required data is directly available and does not depend on the bandwidth workload and availability of a remote server On the other side online storage eases the management of files by triggering automatic backups or holding the logic of the data struc ture and provide supplementary functionality to work on the same data set from different places and devices Figure 5 5 shows the architecture of a hybrid approach based on the persistence compo nents which store files locally as well as remotely The Application Logic is the basis by processing input data and displaying output data This in and output data is available in form of objects and allows logical sets of data to be encapsulated into a single construct For example all relevant information of a specific workspace like a title description or a set of authorised user are bundled in a single workspace object and are manipulated thr
54. ervice getriebenen Workflow Clients zur Unterst tzung von evaluierten Studien der klinischen Psychologie am Beispiel der AristaFlow BPM Suite und Android Bachelorarbeit an der Universitat Ulm University Ulm 2012 GOLDEN HILLS SOFTWARE NC SurveyGold User Guide http www surveygoldsolutions com user guide html visited 2014 03 28 IBM IBM SPSS Statistics 22 Core System Users Guide Ep public dhe ibm com software analytics spss documentation 67 Bibliography 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 68 statistics 22 0 en client Manuals IBM SPSS Statistics Core System_User_Guide paf visited 2014 03 28 IBM Welcome to Eclipse 2005 JORG MICHAEL GRUNING Technische Konzeption und Realisierung der Laufzei tumgebung fur ein generisches Fragebogensystem zur IT gest tzten Durchf hrung von evaluierten Studien der Klinischen Psychologie University Ulm 2012 KITCHENHAM Barbara A PFLEEGER Shari L Principles of survey research In ACM SIGSOFT Software Engineering Notes 27 2002 Nr 2 pp 20 http dx doi org 10 1145 511152 511155 DOI 10 1145 511152 511155 ISSN 01635948 KROGSTIE John OPDAHL Andreas SINDRE Guttorm Lecture Notes in Computer Science Bd 4495 Advanced Information Systems Engineering 19th International Conference CAISE 2007 Trondheim Norway June 11 15 2007 Proceedings Berlin and Heidelberg Springer Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2007
55. fined area On the left side of figure 5 3 the modelling of a questionnaire is shown Elements are inserted into the questionnaire by simply dragging them on an available edge With every insertion and deletion edges are adjusted and created automatically via the Connector Creator component After the Ele ment Placer component positions the questionnaire elements on the modelling view area the Connector Creator calculates paths between each linked element pair Those paths are not allowed to overlap to avoid ambivalent interpretations At last the Graph Operations component offers direct access to the modelling graph and a set of predefined operations like setting a comprehensive zoom level or searching for a specific element With the Multi language support component a template is defined which offers common functionality to handle a multi language part Methods to integrate a language mask are covered by this component as well 45 5 Architecture and Implementation Finally the persistence components Object Wrapper File Format IO Handler and Configu ration File Handler provide functionality to save the processed data on disk and optional on a remote server Section 5 2 gives a more detailed view on the structure and mechanisms of the persistence components 5 2 Persistence The persistence layer constitutes an Object Wrapper File Format IO Handler and Config uration File Handler component These components provide functionality to p
56. form an object into an XML representation and vice versa Besides XML further formats like the Java Script Object Notation JSON are available Moreover such formats offer comprehensive functionality to read and write local representations which reduces the functionality the File Format IO Handler component needs to provide 5 2 3 Summary With the management of online data on the one hand and local data on the other hand the complexity to guarantee data integrity increases A hybrid approach to take advantage by combining the online and offline functionality requires a strict defined interaction pattern to coordinate the data access Furthermore the different technologies to store data sets remotely demand the responsible components to allow a flexible adaption With a wrapper layer this adaption is provided and offers supplementary functionality like queueing and state assignments To ensure a validated data set the online data is weighted higher than the local files and therefore avoid manually data manipulation Nevertheless strong tools and libraries for web services are available to provide support functionality for this hybrid approach 49 5 Architecture and Implementation 5 3 Design Patterns Design patterns are basically design tools to improve existing code They standardize common programming tasks into recognizable forms giving your projects better cohesiveness Lasater 2010 7 With design patterns componen
57. graphical StatPac editor By highlighting a text fragment in the editor it can be linked to an empty question in the codebook Based on a given codebook StatPac can generate a questionnaire for print media or web An internet questionnaire requires a user script defining its structure and content To add the question Gender for example to an internet survey the command Radio Gender is defined in the script whereby the fragment Radio indicates that radio buttons are used to provide the answers available An intermediate text fragment is added by the command Text following the required text StatPac as well as SurveyGold uses several file types to save and load the user generated content and therefore provides independent configurator environments Additional online features are accessible and mostly correlate with internet surveys 3 3 Mobile Applications Mobile applications are designed primarily for devices with small screens and limited hard ware resources like smartphones or tablet pcs The control concept for these devices is mostly based on touch gestures including the input of text using an on screen keyboard Although these restrictions lay in contrast to the rich functionality which should be provided by a questionnaire configurator several approaches for creating a questionnaire with mo bile devices are available With Pollcode 4 an approach besides the previous presented configurators is available Pollcode does
58. h is used in chapter 5 for the software architecture of a process aware questionnaire configurator 2 1 Questionnaires Questionnaires belong to the empiric research in social sciences In the empiric research there are two different approaches of gaining information about a predefined topic Firstly qualitative research methods which define a thematic guideline but avoid standardised pro ceedings These methods are flexible and exploratory approaches with the aim of building a hypothesis Take for an example a group discussion of the topic Should smoking be pro hibited The topic is predefined and a moderator lets the participants offer their opinions The opinions are written down and analysed later on Secondly quantitative research methods which focus on building a universal model with a representable number of samples This model usually proves or refutes a predefined hy pothesis To gain comparable information the same requirements have to be provided for 2 Fundamentals each respondent The quantitative methods are therefore usually fully standardised Ques tionnaires in written form belong to this quantitative research method 31 Definition 1 Questionnaire A questionnaire is defined as a document containing questions and other types of items designed to solicit information appropriate to analysis 3 The great number of questionnaire types is categorised by its process There are personal telephone written
59. ic Figure 5 5 Architecture of the persistence components of a process aware questionnaire configurator prototype 5 2 1 Direct Database Connection To connect a questionnaire configurator to a database connectivity drivers are required providing methods for the direct access to stored data These methods are called queries and exist in different forms throughout relational hierarchical network databases and many more A query reads or writes data parts from an underlying database These data parts are sets of single variables which reflect a data type respectively like an integer or a string 47 5 Architecture and Implementation A wrapper therefore has to assemble an object e g a workspace object by firstly exe cuting queries until all required variables are received and finally assigning these variables to the right object variables On the other hand a given object which needs to be stored in a remote database has to be disassembled into single queries Because the integrity of the transmission is depending on the successful executing of every single query for an object a transactional content has to be available either by the server or by the application Furthermore the database structure may be different but nevertheless has to cover the offered functionality of the application If for example a workspace offers the manipulation of a description text an related string variable for the description has to be available in the
60. ifferent configurator approaches GQS LimeSurvey SurveyGold Stat Pac and Pollcode are described varying from a minimal question generator to entire ques tionnaire life cycle environments Every approach offers different functionality regarding the construction the persistence and the element variety of a survey In nearly every approach several elements reaching from simple text fragments to complex filtering questions are available but limited to specific use cases or conditions These restrictions are in many cases related to a strict logical questionnaire model which does not support any deviations Consider for example the GQS configurator in section 3 1 which allows text fragments only between question groups If every question requires a description and introduction text one group has to be created for every single question causing an overhead of several unnecessary question groups Furthermore none of these approaches considered a questionnaire as a sequence of ac tivities and therefore as a process If a questionnaire is executed the respondent is asked a number of questions enriched with text and other elements in a specific order If this order can be mapped to a PAIS as described in section 2 2 several tasks can be performed automatically and additional functionality can enrich the questionnaire s creation and exe cution In chapter 4 such a technical mapping of a questionnaire to a PAIS is discussed 27 3 R
61. iner for question ele naire layer ments page layer To transform these requirements into a generic model a three layer architecture is defined which consists of a questionnaire layer a page layer and an element layer The ques tionnaire layer considers the questionnaire as a container As shown in figure 4 1 every questionnaire hosts a set of question pages and global properties The logical page break construct is expressed as a question page in form of a container for elements instead of an 31 4 Process aware Questionnaires exclusive questionnaire element equal to a question or a text element With this abstrac tion layer supplementary interfaces for the control flow represented as an arrow in figure 4 1 of pages are provided Every control flow edge is enriched by an optional constraint set which influences depending on its evaluation the flow of upcoming pages For example a questionnaire page about Smoking will be skipped if the information that the respondent is a non smoker is provided through a question on a previous page To avoid a limitation of the filter functionality the constraint set is not restricted in its number of con straints Nevertheless the occurrence of these constraints is important for the constraint set To guarantee an always executable page sequence constraints have to be evaluable as soon as the related page is displayed and therefore only allow constraints which are defined in prev
62. ion 23 2 1 Questionnaires If the number of random samples is too small or does not cover a heterogeneous group the data is not representable Reliable data requires always a representative number of samples Definition 5 Unbiased The stability of an instrument independent from environment variables and the person who uses it 27 For the avoidance of disturbances and errors an unbiased environment has to be created For example setting a default answer like Yes or No for a Yes or No question will affect the choice of the respondents If a questionnaire produces valid reliable representative and unbiased data we call it a standardised instrument For a standardised instrument the validity of its elements is as important as the valid order of the elements 2 1 2 Measuring Scales Questions provide the data needed for analysis of a questionnaire To analyse empiric magnitudes answers are mapped to measurable numbers Therefore a scale is defined for every question Every scale has a different set of comparative operators M Comparative operators define in which ways gathered data can be transformed without any information loss The larger the set of operators the higher is the expressiveness of the scale Four different scales with a static set of comparative operators are distinguished The Nominal Scale M 7 contains the smallest set M of comparative operators and is therefore the most inaccurate sca
63. ious inevitably executed pages Beside the constraint set global properties defined in a questionnaire represent settings regarding every page of a questionnaire As an example consider the possibility to enable or disable the functionality of jumping one page back in a questionnaire If it is globally enabled each page is enriched by an additional button to return to the previous page Other examples are the earlier in this section mentioned interview mode the available language set and the list of authorised users The page layer defines every page as a container similar to the questionnaire container it is nested in as shown in figure 4 2 Several properties describe comprehensive settings or behaviour regarding every element of the page For example a property could define if the page is tagged as optional and therefore can be skipped by a respondent during the survey As presented in figure 4 2 each element has a data and style content which can be freely defined during the process of the questionnaire creation Consider a text element which holds an introduction text in different languages These languages are defined by the global property of the questionnaire A single text item could be saved as a text string and the entire element content as a list of text strings where each item represents the introduction text for a specific language For the representation of the content additional style information are provided to define the layou
64. ires consist of a variety of elements reaching from simple information texts to complex question constructs as described in section 2 1 3 AS seen in the examples from chapter 3 this set of elements is under steady development and may be extended by new upcoming needs of the target groups The GQS configurator for example has four question 30 4 2 A Technical View on Generic Questionnaires types whereas LimeSurvey defines over 30 With logical elements like page breaks or filter the structure of elements and their dependencies are controlled This logical elements offer comprehensive functionality for the questionnaire elements Page breaks define which elements are displayed at once whereas filter determine the sequence of upcoming pages Finally specific global settings influence the behaviour and functionality of a questionnaire e g by defining its interview mode performed self contained or by an interviewer required languages authorised users etcetera Questionnaire Question Page Global Global Global ER Global Property Property Property eee Property Property Property Property Property Question Pages Sensor Sets Question Elements Element Page Sensor Set AE Data Sensor Set Sensor Set Element Sensor Set Constraint Set Static Order Figure 4 1 A schematic representation of Figure 4 2 A schematic representation a questionnaire as a container of a questionnaire page as for question pages question a conta
65. is nested directly or through other containers e g an RCP PartStack or RCP PartSashCon tainer into an RCP perspective The latter offers additional comprehensive functionality for the arrangement of RCP parts and therefore function as an independent intermediate layer of agents as well This repeats until the root of the RCP application model in form of a single RCP application construct which holds references of all RCP windows is reached In figure 5 8 the corresponding PAC pattern is shown If a view area for another user in terface component should be displayed a new RCP part is created which provides then again a view area for this component Afterwards the RCP part is connected to the RCP perspective which is adjusted to arrange both RCP parts Because most components depend on the functionality of other components a central mechanism to manage dependencies is required For this purpose RCP offers depen dency injection and provides a central storage place for registered components with the lEclipseContext see section 2 3 1 Because the order in which the lEclipseContext is ac cessed is important dependencies can only be resolved if the required components are registered first it is beneficial to fill the IEclipseContext at the start of the application with all required components Especially the availability of the background components for the user interface components is of great concern Because the order of access to user inter
66. ith the Element Builder the life cycle of questionnaire pages and elements is handled Figure 5 2 shows an excerpt of the Element Builder implemented in the configurator proto type New pages and elements in figure 5 2 represented with the blue elements on the left 41 5 Architecture and Implementation can be created whereas existing ones can be modified or deleted in figure 5 2 possible through the editor view on the right Because pages represent a container for elements in reference to the generic model in section 4 2 on the one hand but share much function ality with elements on the other hand the term complex elements is used Furthermore the abstraction of the page as a container offers new complex elements to be derived from a page For an example consider a standardised instrument described in section 2 1 1 Because the occurrence and order of specific elements is predefined in an instrument it represents a page which is restricted in its allowed modification functionality Regular questionnaire elements in contrast are called simple elements Simple elements contain text elements e g headlines questions e g single choice questions and multimedia content e g images With a template for simple as well as complex elements extension points are available for upcoming self created elements Builder 6 Provider 6 Complex elements Page Instrument Decision Decision Simple elements Text m
67. l known design patterns like the Presentation Abstraction Control PAC pattern which divides the graphical representation from the data model on several hierarchical layers In section 5 4 the Rich Client Platform see section 2 3 is integrated into the architecture of the process aware configurator to benefit from available functionality for common program ming tasks The results of this chapter are provided as an overview in section 5 5 5 1 Core Components The components of a process aware questionnaire configurator constitute three categories The user interface components contain the visual representation and therefore focus on 39 5 Architecture and Implementation the user communication with the application In contrast background components deter mine the data processing independently from any user input A special kind of background components are the persistence components which constitute the third category and are described in section 5 2 The latter aim at extending the storage of processed input data over the runtime of the application In figure 5 1 an overview of all components is provided User Interface Components Workspace uestionnaire uestionnaire y R P Q Element Builder Preview Dialogues Management Management Builder Background Components Version Control Dialogue Handler Perspective Handler Protocol Element Placer Connector Creator Graph Operations Status Information Updater Multi language Support
68. lable at application start Another important feature of the RCP is portability Every RCP functionality supports the operating systems Linux Apple MacOSX Oracle Solaris and Microsoft Windows natively For special configuration settings each supported operation system can be configured in dividually by defining different launcher arguments and plugin start levels for example Fur thermore tools to create an executable application based on the source code are provided Application icons a runnable executable and a launcher configuration file are generated automatically No installation is required the application is instantly executable and even brings a chosen runtime environment to decrease the complexity for the user and ease access to a configurator environment 5 5 Summary In this chapter an architecture is presented which covers all requirements for a process aware questionnaire configurator First of all fundamental requirements are collected and bundled logically into components see section 5 1 A set of these components is re sponsible for the user in and output and define a user guidance through the questionnaire creation process Questionnaires are bundled into supplementary workspaces to provide logical collections and nest simple and complex elements which are put together to a fi nalised questionnaire To get a better impression of the components excerpts from an implemented configurator are additionally provided Section
69. le It only checks the data for equality and thus for inequality either As shown in example 1 the answers only indicate whether position 1 Yes or 2 No Was chosen There is no information about the hierachic relation between the two options included 2 Fundamentals Example 1 Nominal Scale Example 2 Ordinal Scale Do you smoke How many cigarettes do you smoke a day 1 Yes 1 0 5 cigarettes 2 No 2 5 15 cigarettes 3 gt 15 cigarettes This is provided by the Ordinal Scale M 4 lt gt In addition to the check for equality the answer options can be compared to each other less or greater In example 2 option 2 includes a greater amount of cigarettes than option 1 e respondents who choose option 2 smoke more cigarettes than respondents who choose option 1 The Interval Scale M lt gt allows through the comparative operators and a more precise comparison of the replies Next to the rough information about the relation less or greater the precise difference can be calculated Applied to example 3 the time difference between two respondents started smoking allows very clear statements If respondent A started smoking in the year 1960 and respondent B started in the year 1980 respondent A smokes 20 years longer than respondent B Although it is obvious for a human that respondent B has been smoking twice as long as respondent A if the survey had taken place in the year 2000 this is n
70. le replies The number of points on each reply represents the importance of the reply to the respondent Besides questions a questionnaire contains a lot of standalone text parts Text paragraphs are used to inform e g of the purpose of the survey to prepare e g explain the next steps or to help the respondent e g if the wording of a question is not understood A typical questionnaire contains the following text fragments e Introduction text at the beginning of a questionnaire stating the involved organisa tions e Headlines introduce new questionnaire parts 2 Fundamentals e Information text can bridge to new topics or provide information for the recent topic e Help text provides the respondent with additional information if a question or text is not fully understood e Instructions for the interviewer regarding the behaviour of the interviewer Furthermore media content and logos are parts of a questionnaire Logos identify the involved organisations and media content provide additional information for the respondent Media content includes videos audio files and images For example a respondent can be confronted with pictures of lung cancer patients in connection with a question about the attitude towards smoking 3 27 2 1 4 Construction of a Questionnaire A questionnaire is a container including elements in a strict defined order Some of the elements are visible to the respondent others are not Conside
71. lock structure With this structure every branch and every loop has exactly one entry and one exit node An entry node represents the start of a new block and an exit node the corresponding end Per convention a process has always a static start and exit node defining its start and termination point Though two blocks are allowed to be nested no two blocks may overlap Because this fact limits the expressiveness of ADEPT2 supplementary operations have been added in the form of synchronisation edges A synchronisation edge expresses a constraint whereby the start of an activity depends on the termination of a different activity 2 Fundamentals data element activity ex Item list isAvailable Ser 5 ay x IT a write gt _ e Lt 7 read Pack and 1 ri ys E e 5 e a e ea d IS p at c h Wf True Take Check customer availability gt order of items o False E Ni SS Inform i o customer XOR SE XOR join end Loop End loop edge Figure 2 2 ADEPT2 example for an ordering process The further sections will cover the basic workflow constructs of the ADEPT2 PAIS Figure 2 2 shows a simple ordering process using the ADEPT2 notation This example process takes orders from a customer checks the availability of the requested items and dispatches them if possible The example consists of four activities Take customer order Check avail ability of items Pack and dispatch and
72. luierung einer dom nenspezifischen Model lierungsumgebung f r prozessorientierte Frageb gen Ulm 2014 THE OSGI ALLIANCE OSGi Core Release 5 2012 http www osgi org download r5 osgi core 5 0 0 paf visited 2014 03 28 69 Bibliography 34 ULLENBOOM Christian Java ist auch eine Insel Das umfassende Handbuch aktuell zu Java 7 Programmieren mit der Java Platform Standard Edition 7 Java von A bis Z Einf hrung Praxis Referenz von Klassen und Objekten zu Datenstrukturen und Algorithmen 10 aktualisierte und berarb Aufl Bonn Galileo Press 2012 Galileo computing ISBN 9783836218023 35 VOGEL Lars Eclipse 4 RCP The complete guide to Eclipse application development Second edition 2013 Vogella series ISBN 3943747077 36 W3C SOAP Version 1 2 http www w3 org TR 2007 REC soap12 part0 20070427 visited 2014 03 28 37 W3C Cascading Style Sheets Level 2 Revision 1 CSS 2 1 Specification 07 07 2011 38 W3C HTML5 2014 http www w3 org TR htm15 visited 2014 03 28 70 Name Juri Schulte Matrikelnummer 677063 Erklarung Ich erklare dass ich die Arbeit selostandig verfasst und keine anderen als die angegebenen Quellen und Hilfsmittel verwendet habe Juri Schulte
73. mat XMI Based on this specification source code Is generated and displayed using JFace 8 In other words the abstract model is transformed into a concrete implementation Trimmed Window Questionee lt application Application x public class Window H lt children xsi type basi private String id 3 was konn Sa Windows children xsi type ad private Rectangle bou Login Profile Controls lt children xsi types private String label Dre lt children xsi type private String tooltip 4 5 Perspective Stack children xsi t private String iconUR a E Perspective Welcome lt children xsi private boolean isMai Windows children xsi private boolean isTo e P Controls piper sli Ke private boolean isVisi A children x51 rivate int selectedE ll FREE SB DEI lt children xsi P a _ Part Stack lt children gt lt children gt lt children gt lt children gt public class Perspectivest en lt handlers xmi id _s3XHl private String accessi Step 1 Step 2 Step 3 Step 4 Graphical Editor XMI Representation Code generation Rendering Figure 2 5 The internal steps for building a workbench An example is the RCP application model The application model allows a user to generate a fully equipped workbench with only the help of a declarative graphical editor With the graphical editor an abstraction layer for the EMF XMI notation is available Based on this user generated model the workbench Is rendered As figure
74. nciple the question group and question tool bars are accessed displaying four tool bars with over 50 tools In contrast to the GQS configurator filtering questions integrated statistical tools for data analysis survey access functionality e g access token generator or sending invitation emails and automated error checks are available among other supplementary functionality Although both web based configurators offer a large number of questionnaire elements several restrictions reduce their integration options in a questionnaire The GQS configura tor offers text elements but only between question groups whereas LimeSurvey does not offer free text elements at all Filtering questions are not provided by GQS while LimeSur vey lacks explicit page breaks Furthermore both configurators require a permanent con nection to the server Every change is stored by manipulating the content of a remote database As a result working offline is not possible 3 2 Desktop Applications In contrast to web based applications desktop applications are designed for rich clients The latter provide enough hardware resources to calculate and display the entire application functionality Therefore a connection to a remote server is possible but not required With SurveyGold 10 an offline configurator environment is available which offers addi tional online features for publishing or sending surveys and receiving survey results for subsequent analysis
75. ng runtime environment all comprehen sive functionality is predefined by the PAIS application through RCP Any changes to these functionality would interfere with existing components and thereby endanger the stability of the entire system The flexibility is therefore decreased but the available functional ity increased Furthermore the complexity of the PAIS application would be raised and resulting from that discourage the target group Because the target group covers mostly professions without an affinity to PCs e g sociologists psychologists doctors etcetera no knowledge concerning processes may be assumed The second approach is based on a standalone questionnaire configurator which accesses PAIS functionality through predefined interfaces Through this programmatic interface ac cess the complexity of the PAIS can be hidden or reduced to a minimum A new developed graphical user interface for example could filter PAIS functionality which is not required or present it in a way which is more suitable for the target group Resulting from that no PAIS functionality besides from those provided by interfaces is reusable and therefore has to be explicitly created Both approaches require a PAIS which offers activities data elements and XOR branches with their related control and data flow to map the technical questionnaire model which is described in section 4 2 4 2 A Technical View on Generic Questionnaires Questionna
76. not provide an environment for the construction of a survey it just focuses on the generation of a single question instead A single or multiple choice question with up to 30 answer options is predefined and configured regarding its style The result is the source code of an HTML 38 form which can be embedded in a website Initially in this generated form the answers are forwarded to a pollcode server which stores and displays the results This behaviour can be freely adjusted in the gener ated source code 26 3 4 Summary The idea to simplify the required functionality for a specific use case of a configurator as far as possible matches the limitations for a mobile application In a wider sense the reduction of functionality to a necessary minimum is beneficial for low hardware resources and small displays Consider for example a mobile application which is implemented to handle only a single static questionnaire Only occurring elements are handled style changes are limited and available space is hard wired to the view of every single element Even device specific optimisations are possible For example in the medical environment such applications exist 1 Although specialised configurators fulfil their goal extensibility and flexibility are not en sured Moreover the approach to create an application for every single questionnaire is a very time consuming process which comes at great cost 3 4 Summary In this chapter five d
77. ometer device whereas continuous sensors measure data through a time interval e g pulse measuring devices and video cameras Every sensor is linked to the index of an element in a page Via this index link the same element is able to refer to different sensors even if it is used many times in the same page For all sensors linked to one index i e element of a page the term sensor set is used in figure 4 2 shown on the left side next to the elements To ensure data privacy every sensor has an attribute defining the starting point of a sensor The explicit starting point requires the respondent to allow the specific sensor to collect the required data whereas an implicit starting point begins with the collection automatically In the latter the respondent should be informed about the used sensors in advance of the survey 4 3 Integration of Questionnaires in Process aware Information Systems With the questionnaire model from section 4 2 every questionnaire consists of three hier archical abstraction layers defining different access points to the model With the question naire layer the questionnaire in its entirely is described with its access to global properties and included question pages In addition the page layer determines the structure of pages with their properties and elements whereas the details of the element construction are de fined in the element layer Because a PAIS offers performable tasks in form of activities onl
78. on of a created questionnaire is provided entirely by the PAIS environment with a developed process aware questionnaire configurator Resulting from that a standardised access to questionnaires on the available clients is defined which reduces the client side complexity But a PAIS offers additional functionality besides an execution environment which is yet unexplored in a configurator environment With an organisational model agent structures are definable by attaching specific abilities roles or positions to a set of agents Positions are connectible to projects or units whereas the latter is nestable into groups Based on this network agents can be assigned and therefore authorised to handle activities or entire processes Consider for example a team of researchers which plans a survey on the health risks of smoking One part of the researchers are doctors the other psychiatrists The interview is divided into two phases The first one contains questions covering the respondent s background related to smoking the second questions about the respondent s health To ensure that only a specialist a psychiatrist for the first phase and a doctor for the second phase is performing the interview every researcher is assigned to a role in the organisational model either to Psychiatrist or to Doctor The role Psychiatrist is then authorised for the activities holding the questions for phase one whereas the role Doctor is authorised f
79. or the activities related to phase two As a result phase one is always performed by a psychiatrist and phase two by a doctor Furthermore the process schema evolution 15 is an promising PAIS functionality for a configurator Because surveys mostly require a development in several iterations includ ing iterations where early versions of questionnaires are put into practice the continu ously adjustment of processes is possible through different process schemes With every adjustment a new process scheme is created which allows instances of earlier process variants to be finished without interruption This mechanism could replace or extend the re quired version control functionality With the PAIS instance migration even ad hoc schema changes 15 for running instances are realisable allowing a questionnaire in execution to 99 7 Future Work be adjusted to the new structure Because constraint sets define question page depen dencies deadlocks are possible As a result strong checks are necessary for the use of the instance migration tool and only questionnaires for test purposes should be affected to ensure the validity of the survey Another interesting aspect of a PAIS is time 16 Although time dependency is a topic still in development a wide range of applications is conceivable Consider the example above where a Survey is divided into two phases To ensure that the respondent is not influenced by the first interview the secon
80. ot directly included in the data Therefore the proportion of the numbers does not correlate with the manifestation of the characteristic Example 3 nterval Scale Example 4 Ratio Scale In which year did you start smoking How many years have you been smoking In year years This fact is covered by the Ratio Scale M lt gt x which requires an absolute zero If the question from example 3 is rewritten as shown in example 4 the value directly reflects the years the respondent has been smoking The value zero defines that a respondent has not been smoking a year yet As a result statements about the ratio can be made like Respondent C smokes for 20 years and respondent D smokes for 40 years therefore respondent D smokes twice as long as respondent C In practice the distinction between the Interval Scale and the Ratio Scale is mostly irrele vant With the operators from the Interval Scale essential statistic methods can already be performed 2 23 2 1 Questionnaires 2 1 3 Elements Questionnaires host a wide variety of different element types Questions text and media content are the most fundamental element groups The most important and complex element type is the question also called item Questions generate pure data and properly gathered data lead to usable information the aim of every survey A variety of question types exist and therefore many possible categorisations A well documented way to cat
81. ough the user interface component Workspace Management Because these objects are struc tured based on a specific programming language they have to be adjusted to match a different structure on a remote server The latter can be a direct database for example communicating via a database connector in form of SQL queries see section 5 2 1 or a web service as described in section 5 2 2 which uses SOAP or HTTP messages with an XML or JSON content for the communication e g REST 5 To provide application logic independently from the data structure of a remote server a wrapper layer is provided by 46 5 2 Persistence the Object Wrapper component as shown in figure 5 5 The functionality to store the data offline is provided by the File Format IO Handler component which uses the already exist ing wrapper to store the objects locally in the same way as the remote server or additional wrappers for a different data structure Finally the Configuration File Handler component manages independently structured application files to change variables of the application runtime environment or to manage user preferences Local Remote Files Local Files Configuration Files Configuration File File Format 10 Handler Handler Workspace Questionnaire Page Instrument Wrapper Wrapper Wrapper Wrapper ee Workspace Questionnaire Page Instrument Object Object Object Object Wrapper Layer Application Objects Application Log
82. p With Freetext Slider Single Choice and Multiple Choice four question types are provided Single and mul tiple choice questions can be displayed vertical or horizontal restricting the answer items to 15 or six respectively At the creation of a new question an intern template function auto matically preallocates redundant parts and properties by using the content of the previous question The question groups can be complemented by text elements and page breaks With text elements intermediate text fragments are created whereas page breaks define 22 3 1 Web based Applications the point where the recent page ends and a new one is started If several questionnaires should be executed successively they can be bundled in sets The configurator provides multi language support and an export method for statistical tools LimeSurvey 6 is a non profit questionnaire managing application Based on an open source approach an initial release was published in 2003 Similar to the GQS configurator LimeSurvey defines a static set of question types which can be adjusted individually by the user Besides single and multiple choice free text and slider questions LimeSurvey offers a variety of additional types including e g question arrays ranking questions and file uploads Questions are also bundled in groups which are ordered via Drag and Drop to design the survey Different is the handling of text elements LimeSurvey reduces text elements to a des
83. r example 1 to 4 from section 2 1 2 If the question from example 1 is answered with No the questions from example 2 to 4 are not relevant for the further course of the interview In fact in this case they are contra productive since they bore respondents and result in a loss of concentration 14 27 To assure only the relevant elements for a specific group of respondents are shown filter are an important tool Filters define paths through a questionnaire by creating dependencies between a reply and the set of following elements i e shown in figure 2 1 Depending on the construction of a filtering question several new paths can be created with one filter question How many cigarettes How many years have do you smoke a day you been smoking Do you smoke How old are you Figure 2 1 Filter including the questions from example 1 3 For questionnaires in paper form a text has to be added to define which element will be the next one Software applications instead are able to hide unused elements and show the 2 2 Process aware Workflow next element directly Because of dependencies between questions filter can aggregate several filter questions to determine the following path The typical setup of a questionnaire starts with an introduction The responsible organisa tions and authors are introduced and the topic of the survey is stated Afterwards simple questions like demographic information should accustom the respond
84. s read The online data requires a login and through a possible loss of connection it does not act as a continuously data source Because a large number of users can work on a validated online data set this data has the highest significance and therefore is always considered as correct if it conflicts with a local data set For example the manipulated offline data by a user can therefore not replace valid data stored on the remote server The local data is always adjusted to the 48 5 2 Persistence online data set To avoid the loss of offline work the Version Control component offers a merge functionality to create new versions based upon old data sets 5 2 2 Web Services Web services provide interfaces described in a machine processable format Every inter face is accessible by an URI via messages of a specific protocol e g HTTP The content of these messages is mostly defined in XML and therefore allows more complex requests than a query as described in section 5 2 1 With XML the structure and content of an entire object can be transferred at once The interfaces of a web service are therefore able to offer entire objects for transmission Resulting from that every wrapper of the Object Wrapper component only requires the mapping from a single XML object to a single appli cation object Because XML is a widespread and well documented descriptive language several software libraries are available which cover the functionality to trans
85. stionnaires 38 5 Architecture and Implementation With a generic questionnaire model and an approach to integrate PAIS functionality into such questionnaires as described in chapter 4 the basis for a standalone process aware questionnaire configurator is created Such a configurator requires additional features to handle the complexity of the supplementary PAIS support in a user friendly way Further more the generic questionnaire model as shown in section 4 2 defines several extension points for a flexible expandability of configurators In this chapter an architecture is pre sented which lists and structures required components including their dependencies to pave the way for a concrete implementation of a process aware questionnaire configurator To validate this architecture an implemented prototype is developed as part of this thesis and grants an insight into a concrete implementation based on RCP The first step of implementing a configurator is the listing of requirements and their pack aging into different software components Section 5 1 provides an overview of necessary core components reaching from front end to persistence modules A closer look at the persistence components is given in section 5 2 To avoid restrictions by only providing ei ther online or offline functionality this persistence components describe a hybrid approach which offers both functionalities These components are structured in section 5 3 by using wel
86. t font font size color etcetera These style settings could be declared individually or follow the syntax of a standardised language for style sheets like the cascading style sheets CSS 37 Because a page in a digital survey is not restricted in its size as in contrast to pen and paper questionnaires with mostly the DIN A4 format the page always fits the overall size of its content or in other word its nested elements The order of the elements is strictly determined during the 32 4 3 Integration of Questionnaires in Process aware Information Systems construction of the page resulting in an explicit control flow shown as arrow in figure 4 2 Every element on a page has therefore an assigned index The collection of information is not only provided by the given answers of a respondent and therefore restricted to questions The body signals from an respondent confronted with a particular situation or question like gestures facial expressions and vital signs e g pulse deliver important supplementary information about the attitude to the related topic A high blood pressure for example may indicate tension and taken photos reveal emotions which are hard to capture with questions With this in mind a sensor framework is inserted in the technical questionnaire model see figure 4 2 Each sensor belongs to exactly one of two sensor types The discrete sensors collect only data at one point of time like a photo camera or a therm
87. tant component of RCP are services Services offer controls over several RCP functionality Via the ThemeManager service for example the style of the RCP appli cation can be changed at runtime The service is accessed by an IThemeManager object injected by dependency injection Further important services are e EModelService programmatic access to the application model e ESelectionService programmatic access to the active selections e EPartService programmatic access to parts e ECommandService programmatic access to commands e EHandlerService programmatic access to handler Each of these services refer to the application model and allow different elements of it to be accessed and manipulated 8 The elements of the application model and their construction in a workbench are described in the sections 2 3 2 and 2 3 3 in more detail 2 3 2 RCP Workbench The RCP workbench itself only represents an empty shell of the user front end To cre ate a fully equipped graphical user interface this empty shell is enriched by several RCP elements The main control is the workbench window which represents the visual area for the containing user interface elements of an RCP application Windows have several properties defining their operations minimising maximising and closing settings visible initial size etcetera and behaviour modal resizeable etcetera Windows contain menus tool bars or tool controls and parts as shown in figure 2 4
88. ted in the loop construct has to be passed for each order For a more precise example consider a customer with three orders The first two orders contain only available items and are therefore packed and dispatched The third one misses an item and hence the customer is informed that the order could not be dispatched probably Although the same fragment is run over again the execution order can be different 2 3 Eclipse Rich Client Platform The Eclipse Rich Client Platform RCP is a Java based development tool for standalone desktop applications It provides a framework which can be freely enriched by functionality to build a client side software system Because of the great basic functionality the term Rich Client Platform was established The Eclipse RCP is based on an OSGi runtime environment to guarantee modularity and expandability 24 Every software module is encapsulated in a bundle or in RCP terms a plugin An OSGi runtime manages these plugins through their entire life cycle including resolving dependencies between plugins To add supplementary functionality new plugins are developed and linked to the OSGi runtime The Eclipse IDE for example is a fully plugin based application with a great number of plugins RCP was originally extracted from Java is an object oriented programming language developed by Sun Microsystems 34 The Eclipse integrated development environment is a collection of tools for computer programmers to dev
89. these amounts of plugins features allow a logical separation by simply bundling a list of plugins and other features The OSGi runtime breaks these features down into plugins again and starts the life cycle management for each plugin The life cycle installs the required plugin and resolves its dependencies There are two types of dependencies The import dependencies define which other plugins are necessary for a plugin to run correctly Export dependencies in contrast describe the functionality a plugin offers for other plugins in RCP called extension point After its dependencies are resolved the plugin is started and according to its activation policy deferred or directly activated During its life cycle the plugin can be stopped and started arbitrary After the application is terminated it is uninstalled 33 35 In figure 2 3 the most important RCP components are shown The access point for user developed plugins is highlighted in orange For the development of such plugins the plug in development environment PDE offer support These tools are organised in three parts The PDE Ul part leads the user through several development and deploying steps with the help of wizards launchers and editors With the PDE API Tools the documentation and maintenance of plugins are supported especially regarding the JavaDoc At last the PDE Build eases the build process of an RCP application by fetching the required files and properties and combine them in
90. titute a plain area which is filled by user created forms and elements In figure 2 4 the part on the right has no content and part Tables holds a table with five items The content of part Trees is unknown Parts can be ar ranged in different ways A part stack holds several parts as tabs and always displays only the selected one The selection is tracked and accessed through the ESelectionService service With a PartSashContainer several parts and part stacks are placed next to each other in a restricted area Parts are accessible through the EPartService at runtime The entire set of parts and part containers displayed in a window is called a perspective They therefore define views and are not visible for the user Because the number of perspectives is not limited perspective stacks keep track of all available perspectives 17 2 Fundamentals All these workbench elements have a predefined declarative structure and are placed au tomatically in the workbench To add delete or change a workbench element RCP allows via a graphical editor access to the workbench model holding the workbench elements It is called the application model and is described in the next section 2 3 3 RCP Application Model The application model is based on the Eclipse Modeling Framework EMF EMF is a frame work to build applications grounded on a structured data model This data model is called the meta model and is specified in the XML Metadata Interchange for
91. ts and component parts are structured as mentioned in the quote in a standardised way This standardisation validates the structure and reduces the introductory period In this section the well known Presentation Abstraction Control PAC Observer and Factory Pattern are discussed regarding their advantages for a process aware questionnaire configurator The PAC pattern separates the functional core of an application from the graphical repre sentation With a set of hierarchic organised agents a multi layer architecture is created Every agent represents a part of the application logic and defines a presentation abstrac tion and control component The presentation component displays data in a graphical user interface and therefore manages the user in and output Displayed data is located in the abstraction component in form of a structured data model Via the control component the presentation is connected with the abstraction and supplementary functionality for the com munication with other agents is provided There are three types of agents The top level agent constitutes the core functionality and therefore mostly manages no user interface parts Only one single top level agent is allowed which defines the root layer of the ar chitecture Intermediate agents constitute the underlying layers at least one by defining dependencies between agents of any type The bottom layer is defined by bottom agents which provide encapsulated concepts for
92. ulm university UU Y M Ulm University 89069 Ulm Germany Faculty of Engineering and Computer Science Institute of Databases and In formation Systems Technical Conception and Implementation of a Configurator Environment for Process aware Questionnaires Based on the Eclipse Rich Client Platform Master thesis at Ulm University Submitted by Juri Schulte juri schulte uni ulm de Reviewer Prof Dr Manfred Reichert Dr Vera K nzle Supervisor Johannes Schobel 2014 Version April 23 2014 2014 Juri Schulte This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial ShareAlike 3 0 License To view a copy of this license visit http creativecommons org licenses by nc sa 3 0 de or send a letter to Creative Commons 543 Howard Street 5th Floor San Francisco California 94105 USA Satz PDF lATEX 2e Abstract Questionnaires are one of the fastest and easiest methods for inquiring information about a required topic Especially the more and more ad vancing online connectivity and mobile accessibility offer additional pos sibilities like working collaboratively from different places or store results centrally to make it an even faster and more comfortable tool for data col lection Several existing software approaches to create questionnaires called questionnaire configurators are available and expensively tai lor functionality to the needs of the target group In this thesis an ap
93. user interaction The result is an architecture where application parts are continuously subdivided into smaller parts with every hierarchical layer Especially complex applications with a lot of user inter action benefit from the possibility to encapsulate semantic parts independent from compre hensive functionality Consider for example the excerpt of the questionnaire management in figure 5 6 A questionnaire hosts several editable information and settings as described in section 5 1 which are encapsulated into the three different semantic parts Description Dialogue Dependency Dialogue and Operations Dialogue A Description Dialogue holds all the descriptive information about a questionnaire whereas the Dependency Dialogue determines the dependencies to other questionnaires and an additional setting to lock the questionnaire With the Operations Dialogue comprehensive functionality for the manage 50 5 3 Design Patterns ment of a single questionnaire is provided Each of these parts concentrate on different aspects of a questionnaire and therefore invoke different functionality Because all parts belong to the same superior construct a questionnaire they are displayed and handled as a unit in form of a Questionnaire Dialogue f for example the height of the Description Dialogue exceeds the overall height of the Questionnaire Dialogue e g by adding new supported languages the size of the superior Questionnaire Dialogue is ext
94. y one access point can be mapped to an activity natively at once With three abstraction layers three different approaches to map a questionnaire to a process are possible 33 4 Process aware Questionnaires Age Smoker X x LA eal s e e La a How old are Do you you smoke When did you start smoking Element Element i Element EA Da A A E SA Figure 4 3 Example for a process aware questionnaire at element level The mapping of the element layer to a PAIS is shown in figure 4 3 All questionnaire ele ments are directly represented as an activity If an activity is executed the involved element is displayed and able to store user input in data elements The activity How old are you in figure 4 3 holds a question element which inquires the respondents age and saves the an swer in the data element Age Each data element can be used as a constraint for branches and therefore define which path is chosen With the constraint set of the questionnaire model an analogy is available This constraint set is therefore representable through a group of data elements restricted to a specific value range In figure 4 3 the data elements Age and Smoker are combined to the constraint set Age lt 16 AND Smoker TRUE containing the two constraints Age lt 16 and Smoker TRUE Only if both constraints are fulfilled expressed by the AND operator the rel

4 Process-aware Questionnaires

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