61005 Survey software

I need a survey system similar in many ways to, but without a lot of the bells and whistles of, Perseus SurveySolutions. In particular I am looking for something that is cross-platform so it can be used on Macs, PCs, and Linux boxes. That may mean that the system itself is simply designed to work under PHP with MySQL or a proprietary database (actually I'd favor a proprietary database!), or works in Java. There are three main parts: the design part (see Requirement 1), the data-collecting part which lives on a Web site as a php or perl script, and the reporting/data exporting part. The reasons for the requirements below are to have the flexibility and ease of use required by a professional piece of survey software. At this time, there are no really good survey packages for cross-platform use, and not really any good ones for Windows, either. I realize I am asking a lot but I think that by working together we stand to make a good living off of this. Samples will be provided on request. Requirement 1. Must be able to accept questions in the following formats: 1a. Question name goes here. * This is a radio button choice * So is this * And this 1b. This is another question name - This is a checkbox choice - So is this - And this 1c. This is an essay question __ (two underlines on a new line after the question) 1d. This is a fill in the blank question __ (two underlines but on the same line as the question) 1e. This produces a table which allows for a single rating scale to be applied to many questions: * Choice one * Choice two * Choice three (these are radio button choices but checkboxes must also be allowed!) Item being rated one Item being rated two Item being rated [etc] It should be able to import plain text files (making allowances for teh different ways line feeds/paragraph returns are done in Macs, PCs, and Linux), but should also provide an easy editor which provides a blank sheet (or a partially filled in sheet, Requirement 2. Must output questions in standard and concise html, with no span nonsense. If classes are used they must be used only where necessary and must make sense. Requirement 3. Tables (as in sample question 1e above) should be output to look like: CHOICE 1 CHOICE 2 CHOICE 3 ITEM 1 O O O ITEM 2 O O O ITEM 3 O O O Requirement 4. The system must be able to handle 50,000 responses to a 120-question survey without faltering. Requirement 5. The system must have safeguards against spam: * The e-mail address that data is sent to must be encrypted in a separate file * It must not be possible to use the form to send e-mail anywhere else * There must be reasonable safeguards against buffer overflows and the like Requirement 6. The system must have safeguards against intrusion: * Raw data must be saved in a safe, non-web-accessible location * Raw data should be writeable by the program (obviously) but not readable if possible Requirement 7. You should be able to have at least 250 questions in a survey, and at least 50 choices per question. Requirement 8. Essay questions must be able to handle as much data as a reasonable person would throw at them - which means well over 256 characters. Requirement 9. The system must be able to produce tab-delimited text for import into Excel and similar programs. * Users should be able to choose between having just numbers exported, with a text file being produces to show what numbers correspond to the choice text, and having a tab-delimited file produced which actually provides such text * The tab-delimited file must have all the text of open-ended questions shown Requirement 10. The system must be able to handle odd characters in questions and choices, as well as respondents' replies - such as apostrophes and quotes. Requirement 11. The system must be able to translate respondents' replies to open-ended questions in a way which turns tabs into spaces and new-lines into several spaces and an asterisk (for clarity). Requirement 12. The system must, when the respondent finishes answering the survey, both send an e-mail with the text to the survey writer, and record the answers in an online database. (Belt-plus-suspenders ensures data integrity in case of disaster). The e-mails and database should be optional (users can choose which one or both). Requirement 13. In accordance with #12 there must be a Mac and a Windows client (Java? C? Lots of ways) to create a database using these e-mails. Requirement 14. When the respondent finishes answering the survey, they should be redirected to a defined thank-you / acknowledgement page. Requirement 15. The system must be able to produce reports that can be copied and pasted into Excel (perhaps simply generated and saved as tab-delimited text). These reports must be customizable (the person decides what they want) and must include: 1. Simple frequency counts and/or percentages (the user chooses -- if both, it shoudl be in count-percent-count-percent format) 2. "Banners" - counts and/or percentages broken out by a particular variable (for example, each question broken out by a question that asks for respondents' ages). The user must be able to choose whether he/she wants the question headings on the top (columns) or the left (rows), e.g.: 20 years old 30 years old 40 years old I liked it 14 26% 28 52% 12 22% I didn't like it 19 38% 20 40% 11 22% and I liked it I didn't like it 20 years old 14 26% 19 38% 30 years old 28 52% 20 40% 40 years old 12 22% 11 22% In both cases, the reports should use the question and choice text rather than numbers. (It would know the text from Requirement 1.) Requirement 16. The system must be usable by people with both Macs and Windows. I can provide reasonable Mac testing. Web based portions must be compatible with Safari, Firefox, and Explorer. Requirement 17. The system will ideally be usable by people without command-line access to their web server but this is a preference not a requirement, really. Requirement 18. The system will be able to output open ends in a tab-delimited file with one or two other variables, not outputting empty opens - e.g. if I want a file that just has the open ends, age, and liking of a product, I can get it, and not have to delete rows that don't have open ends in them. Requirement 19. The system can dump its choice labels and question labels in a text file designed to make importing data into SPSS easier. This is an easy format that I'll provide. Requirement 20. The system can optionally put a Q before each question number (so it's Q1a, Q1b, Q3, etc) for compatibility with SPSS Requirement 21. The system can handle question numbers such as 1, 2, 3, a, b, c, 10a, 10b, IVa, IVb, A1, etc. Requirement 22. (This may be added after the main system is done but some provision for it must be designed in) Respondents should be able to save their session at any point and log back in later to finish their incomplete survey - but once it's done, it should be done, and no going back to change the answers. This probably would have to be done using a username and password or just a good password. In each case they should make it up and if there's a conflict with a password already in the system, the program must tell them about it and let them pick another one. When they return to finish, all the answers they've already given should be filled in already! Requirement 23. The system MUST be robust and allow people to download the html code it produces, work it over quite seriously in Adobe GoLive or Macromedia Dreamweaver, and upload it to the Web site of their choice. This is meant to be a serious piece of survey software and not the usual survey-monkey toy. All html produced by the program should be very clean and tight. Requirement 24. The system should be able to work under most UNIX-orLinux-with-Apache environments and not require esoteric plugins or libraries (unless they come built in). Requirement 25. The programmer must be available for rapid-response e-mail support at a price of $20/incident or less, and be willing to share any bug-fixes or advice with me. Requirement 26. Once we get it working, key parts of the system should be somehow protected in a "black box" so people who buy it cannot simply resell it! Requirement 27. At least once per survey the system should "phone home" with its IP address and serial number. Requiremetn 28. As implied in requirement 27, the system should require a serial number to operate - this should be part of the install process and easy to do. Since it's web-based it should "phone home" and make sure that serial number has not been used by anyone else on the first install. This will in turn require a small program on my server to validate serial numbers. If we wnat to be really clever we can have a database with randomly created serials (I can create those) rather than an algorithm to avoid cracking. It shoudl check the IP address each time. Requirement 29. The data collector has to be set up so that it only takes data from a particular range of IP addresses or web site names - so that Fred down the street can't process his surveys using my server. I think we should set it up so that people can have three servers with their standard installation but can buy additional three packs. Requirement 30. It should be able to deal with out of order questions in both the e-mail replies and the Requirement 31. It should be able to deal with Java in the html page (that is, not have conflicting/exclusive Java there). Requirement 32. The output html should be able to work in all major browsers (Netscape 4+, Explorer 4+ Mac/Win, Safari, Opera, AOL, etc). This is probably a given anyway. It's OK if the survey-creation and report-creation systems require a newer browser but again these need to be cross platform. Requirement 33. Error codes should be explicit and clear. If something goes wrong I want to know exactly what it is. Requirement 34. There must be a spreadsheet view available so I can sort open-ended comments and look for duplicates. It should flag duplicate responses within each column so they appeared in red or something, so I'll easily be able to track and destroy dups. Deleting cases (rows) should be easy (a keystroke or something). Requirement 35. The program should be able to flag duplicates and be sorted so that duplicates are all shown together. Requirement 36. Empty/blank surveys should be automatically deleted. Requirement 37. The code however should be commented well for troubleshooting - though I expect to use the person who developed the code for all future development, we need to plan for the sad "hit by a bus" scenario. It is important that once written for me, the software not be given or sold to anyone else. I will provide a 15% royalty on each system sold and will almost certainly pay for revisions regularly. This could be a nice regular piece of income. I would like to have this be reasonably priced and sell a lot of 'em. If it's really good or if sales are high and support is good I can increase the royalty. The source code will belong to Toolpack Consulting, LLC and will be copyrighted as such with credit to the author as a "work for hire." The author may put his name and Web site in an "about" box or similar unobtrusive location.