Basic concepts of electronic forms

Source: Internet
Author: User
Tags mathematical functions
Yuan Yongfu (http://www.xdesigner.cn)

(Some texts in this Article refer to some documents on the Internet)
Basic concepts of forms
A large number of forms and documents are used in the production and office management processes of various enterprises and institutions. These forms and documents are usually forms. Forms Form forms the Operation and Management Basis of units and enterprises, and truthfully and in detail records the data in the operation and management process, is a very important management object in enterprise informatization.
To achieve strict and all-round quality management, enterprises must establish a variety of large-scale standardized and centralized production management systems. The purpose is to control large-scale and complex production processes, products with stable production models and process quality control. This process can be embodied in the filling and processing of various forms associated with the production process. For example, management and control of personnel, finance, and materials in the production process are based on the form. In the business management of banks, insurance, transportation, post and telecommunications, and other enterprises and institutions, a large number of standardized forms are relied on. Otherwise, enterprise business cannot be processed.
Although the essence of a form is to analyze and extract the business attributes, formulate a form, print it on paper, and fill in, process, and transmit it in actual applications. The table content reflects the specific business of an enterprise in many aspects. If there is no standardized form describing the business attributes of an enterprise, and the parties have their own requirements when processing the business, there will be great randomness and contingency in business processing, this conflicts with modern production and management requirements. Therefore, form standardization, effectiveness, and processing efficiency directly affect the quality and effect of business processing in production and management.
Disadvantages of Traditional forms
The generation, processing, and transfer of traditional pre-fabricated paper forms are an important cause of errors, slowness, and high costs in enterprise business processing. Enterprises spend a lot of money and time processing forms. The customer must first fill in the original paper documents, submit them to the business personnel for verification and input, and then collect and process them centrally. When filling out paper documents, the customer may easily misunderstand the procedures and must repeat them. This increases manual review in system processing, reduces service efficiency and quality, and increases cost processing. In addition, due to the existence of a large number of manual processing, there is an inevitable high probability of handling errors. To reduce the probability of such errors, we need to send people to check these forms repeatedly, leading to an increase in management costs.
Information technology for enterprises and institutions
With the improvement of computer hardware performance and the sharp decrease in prices, the rapid development and popularization of computer network technology, and the continuous development of computer software technology, enterprises and institutions began to implement and popularize enterprise information systems. It also includes the informatization and electronization of forms. In this case, the customer can directly input or browse the information previously input or transmitted by the customer through the business personnel. Customers can submit their own forms through the network to view the forms, and the software can assist in filling out qualified forms. This can reduce the intermediate environment, reduce errors, improve efficiency, save manpower, and speed up form processing.
Traditional pre-printed paper forms consume a lot of paper and consume a lot of printing, storage, distribution and processing costs. The information system can avoid this situation, greatly reduce the Office and management costs of enterprises and institutions, and save on natural and human resources.
Electronic Form
In the information system, a form is generally displayed as a page for users to enter and view data. A form contains several form elements. The form element types mainly include static text tags, single-line or multi-line text input box, list box, drop-down list, single-line and check box, in addition to some more complex form element types. You can input form data through the mouse and keyboard in these form elements, or select some listed form items to complete the input of form data.
The electronic form interface has a specific user experience. Important:

  1. Auxiliary Data Input: Provides database query and list query. For example, the content of the list in the list box or drop-down list can be filled in from the data source. You can enter the number of some records, you need to pop up a record number browsing dialog box to allow the user to select a record. the user does not need to remember to enter a non-user-friendly record number.
  2. Data validation: the software system can automatically verify the input data confirmed by the user, including the data format validation and Data Validity verification. For example, you can only enter an ID card number in a text box. If the user does not enter the encoding format of the ID card number, the system prompts the user to re-enter the correct ID card number.
  3. Numerical Relationship Between form elements: a certain mathematical relationship may exist between several form elements. The numerical value of a form element is the result of mathematical expressions performed by other form elements. Mathematical Expressions can include four arithmetic operations, Parentheses, and some mathematical functions. When a table is running and the user modifies a form data, the software system automatically executes the numerical Running Relationship Between form elements to update the form status in real time.
  4. Numeric relationship between multiple forms: this relationship is similar to the numerical relationship between form elements, but beyond the range of a single form. A complete business can contain multiple forms, and there may be some mathematical relationships between form elements in different forms, the numeric value of a form element is the result of some form elements of other forms performing mathematical expressions. For example, data 1 in Form 1 is the sum of Data 2 in Form 2 and data 3 in Form 3.
  5. Dependencies between form elements: the status of some elements in a form may depend on the data status of another form element. For example, there is a check box in the form, and several elements are dependent on this check box. When you check this check box, the form elements dependent on this check box are available. If you do not check this check box, the form elements that depend on the check box are not available. All operations are performed automatically. If you do not check the user interface, the software immediately updates the form interface to reflect the dependency between the form elements. The form element can depend on the check box, or a list item in the single comment, list box, or drop-down list box.
    Generate plain text: in some systems, generate plain text based on the data entered in the form to describe the data of the entire form. This can greatly compress the data display space, and provide text-only data support to other software systems. Currently, the technology cannot generate plain text data of natural language styles based on forms, but it can generate plain text content close to natural language.
  6. Save form data: modern complex information systems are integrated with several relatively independent modules. software modules should implement an open structure, so form data should be stored in the development data structure, the XML structure is preferred in the developed data structure. Form data should be easily stored in XML documents to facilitate other information systems to process form data.
  7. Cross-type cross-platform: although the current B/S development model is the most important software development model, the C/S development model cannot be ignored, and many old systems are C/S systems. Therefore, electronic forms can be used in B/S or C/S systems. The same forms can run in B/S and C/S systems, it should also have the same runtime characteristics, including the auxiliary input of form data, the large numeric relationship and dependency relationship between form elements. In addition, when developing form modules for B/S and C/S, the work of customizing form templates should not be repeated, the same form template can be used in B/S and C/S systems without modification.

Development of Electronic Forms
As a computer software developer, in addition to the functions of electronic forms, you also need to pay attention to the implementation of electronic forms. Currently, computer software developers generally use the Form Designer embedded in development tools, such as VB, Delphi, and. net Form Designer, design form elements on a form, these development tools are equipped with a powerful form designer, and can be fully functional programming development. But it is still not suitable for designing a large number of forms. Its main disadvantages are:

  1. These development tools are common development tools and are not optimized for form development. It is not suitable to use it to design a large number of forms. In addition, there are a large number of tables in the form, and some common development tools do not have table controls, so it is difficult to implement the form interface of Table Styles.
  2. There are a lot of relationships between form elements, including numerical calculation relationships and form Element dependencies. For general development tools, to implement this real-time form feature, a lot of control needs to be written in the background.Code. These codes are large, and the compilation process is simple but troublesome, which affects the development efficiency.
  3. It is difficult to save the XML format of data. The development tool needs to write code to load the form data from the XML document and set each form element one by one, to save XML documents, you need to collect and save form data. A large number of operations are required.ProgramCode.
  4. Modifying existing forms with development tools can easily cause application system re-compilation and redeployment. Modern application systems need to ensure long-term uninterrupted operation. Re-compilation and re-deployment of executable code of programs will lead to application system downtime, file update and restart processes, this process is dangerous and affects the system's long-term uninterrupted operation requirements.
  5. Using development tools to develop forms cannot ensure that the same form is used in B/S or C/S systems. For example, use. NET development form. You can use its winform Form Designer to design forms in the C/S system, and use the web form designer to design forms in the B/S system, however, the design structures of the two designers cannot be universal. If a system requires a B/S version and a C/S version, you must design and maintain both the winform version and the web version for each form, this increases the workload of system development and maintenance.
  6. Using development tools to develop forms cannot achieve cross-platform implementation, such as VB and. the forms designed by the two tools are not mutually called, or even. NET development, using VB. net and the form interface developed using C # both require extra work. Vs. the form developed by. Net cannot be used in the Java system. Therefore, if a system requires a form.. NET and Java versions, you must design and maintain each form simultaneously.. NET and web versions, which increases the workload of system development and maintenance.
    As you can imagine, if a system requires both winform. net, Asp. net, Java, and even more versions, the same form needs to design and maintain multiple versions at the same time, and the development and maintenance workload of the system increases exponentially.
  7. The general cost of development tools, including the cost of software purchase and use, is not low. With the development of software legalization, software companies and customers need to pay additional costs for development tools to develop and maintain forms, which increases project costs and increases customer investment.

Because there are several deficiencies in using common development tools to directly develop workbooks, special tools are used to maintain and define forms. At first, people proposed the form template concept and began to use the configuration file to define the form template. The original form template configuration file can be an INI file, XML file, HTML file, or binary file. These form template files define the structure of the form, including the form elements. At first, there is no graphical designer, but manual editing and maintenance of these configuration files, the workload is quite large.
To solve the problem of manual form template file configuration, a professional graphical form designer emerged. These professional tools have brought new improvements to the development of electronic forms. The main benefits of using a dedicated graphical form designer are:

    1. The graphic form designer can design the form interface in WYSIWYG mode, which greatly improves the efficiency of designing forms and frees productivity.
    2. The graphical form designer can quickly customize the form to avoid inefficient and prone to errors when manually modifying the configuration file.
    3. Compared with common development tools, the graphic form designer has small software and is easy to install and deploy. Work efficiency is higher.
    4. With the support of the application system, the graphic form designer can customize the form templates in the system online. Modifying the form template does not require restarting the application system, but does not affect the long-term uninterrupted operation of the application system.
    5. Well-designed form templates are supported by the application system. They can be used in B/S systems or C/S systems, it is also possible to implement the cross-language cross-platform cross-Architecture Application of form templates. If an application system has multiple versions, the form template can be applied to these different versions of the application system without modification, to avoid the emergence of multiple versions of the same form.
    6. The Form Designer can quickly define the dependencies and numerical calculation relationships between form elements. With the support of the application system, the form has these dynamic features at runtime without additional programming.

The graphical form designer is the core module of the electronic form system development. It determines the development and maintenance workload of the form module. A good single e-Table Designer can work half the workload, while a mediocre Form Designer cannot play an application role.

the next Article describes how to implement the single calculator for an electronic table.

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