ODK Experts

Shahzad Asghar
INTERNATIONAL CONSULTANT
OPEN DATA KIT TRAINING

Setup Mobile Data collection within 30 Minutes
(Free consultancy and training for NGO/INGOs)
Please contact
Shahzad.cdcu@gmail.com
Data Collection with Mobile phone
ODK is freely available toolkit that you can use for mobile data collection.
XFroms
XForms is an XML format used for collecting inputs from web
forms. XForms was designed to be the next generation of
HTML / XHTML forms, but is generic enough that it can also be
used in a standalone manner or with presentation languages other than
XHTML to describe a user interface and a set of common data manipulation
tasks.

XRX application architecture
Because XForms makes it easy to edit
complex XML data there are many
advantages to using XForms with native XML
databases that frequently leverage REST
interfaces. The combination of three
technologies (XForms on the client, REST
interfaces and XQuery on the server) is
collectively known as XRX application development. XRX is known for its
simple architecture that uses XML both on the client and in the database
and avoids the transformations to object or relational data structures.
Benefits
XForms provides specific benefits when used on mobile devices:

User interfaces using XForms require fewer round trips with the server and
are in that sense more self-contained than user interfaces using HTML 4
forms.
Capabilities of mobile devices vary greatly; consequently the amount of the
work involved in generating different user interfaces for different devices is
of particular concern in the mobile world. XForms has been designed from
the ground up to allow forms to be described independently of the device,
which reduces the amount of work required to target multiple devices.
XForms reduces the need for JavaScript, which is particularly interesting as
JavaScript support varies greatly on mobile devices and cannot be widely
relied upon. This also allows systems on which JavaScript is disabled for
security concerns to continue to operate flawlessly.
Implementations
Xfolite
Xfolite is a light-weight XForms client for the J2ME platform. It was originally
created at Nokia Research Center, and it includes a DOM and XPath 1.0
implementation as well as an XForms engine that implements the XForms
1.1 specification almost completely. XFolite is currently in beta and should
not be considered ready for production use. The first real world
implementation has been in the Nokia Data Gathering mobile client . XML
Schemas and CSS are outside project scope, however. Xfolite is open source
and licensed under the LGPL license.

JavaRosa
JavaRosa is an XForms client written in Java Mobile Edition (J2ME), and
supports a wide array of devices, from top-end smart phones and PDAs with
large screens and abundant memory, to low-end devices like the Nokia 6085
and 2630. Making JavaRosa usable on low-resource devices is one of the
project's highest priorities. JavaRosa 1.0 Alpha was released in September
2010.

ODKCollect
ODKCollect is part of the Open Data Kit, and is an XForms client for Android
devices. The client displays XForm in sequential order obeying form logic,
entry constraints, and repeating sub-structures. Users work through the
prompts and save the submission as completed or partially completed
(allowing later revision), and can record pictures as well as their location
using the phone's built-in camera and GPS device, respectively.

Group Complete
Group Complete is a mobile data collection system that includes Group
Complete Mobile (GC Mobile), an XForms client for Android devices. GC
Mobile provides an interface to create XForms on the mobile device as well
as XForms data entry with capabilities similar to ODKCollect. Forms and data
are stored in CouchDB databases allowing mobile workers to make changes
to forms and data while offline, collaborate on data entry and share
collected data with team members and backoffice data consumers in real-
time. Group Complete is compatible with all major ODK systems.