Dear all
A short while ago I announced the public release of version 2.0 for general production use. Production versions are available from http://epidata.dk/download.php
During development we prepare test and experimental versions. These are made with new features and therefore the epx files are of a different structure. This is why we urge You NOT to use them for real projects, but only for testing. From this version and unwards test and experimental versions will only be supplied in the form of downloadable zipped/tar archives, which you MUST extract before use. (see pps)
The purpose of open testing is to allow users to comment and aid in the development direction. As you know this is a small project in budget compared to large software systems, such that we are depending on the help of users in the tests.
A new experimental version has just been uploaded to the page : http://epidata.dk/testing.php http://epidata.dk/download.php
I do hope that users will challenge the new features, which in short are:
1 User logging and control: Many places now require logging of entry and access to data (e.g. who entered which data on which days for GCP monitoring). Please read the document on how to define extended user access. The document is not a teaching guide for setup of user access principles in general, but a description of the specific implementation we have made. The document explains how user rights are defined in a project and how you can separate entryrights from password changing rights or other aspects of extended data control. See: http://epidata.dk/php/downloadc.php?file=ExtendedAccess.pdf and should be included with the software.
2 E-mail after entry of data: As part of the project properties you may define, that the epz backup file can be mailed to a given mail. The software does NOT send the message but gives the standard mail and name of the file to your own email client. This can be useful if you have many remote entry places and a central analysis office. In such cases ALWAYS add encrypted status to your project.
3 Content in statusbar: In particular when you have long or related dataforms it can be instructive to know values of fields in the Statusbar. This is now a feature of the dataform. Known previously as "type statusbar" in EpiData Classic.
We will provide more information within the next week, but after that next development sequence starts in August. Such that comments and test results should be sent to us at the latest around August 1st. At that point we will plan in more detail for the autumn.
As always - do report to this list of your comments and results. Al types of comments are welcomed including as well enthusiastic and critical comments on design choices on our part.
Warm regards again
Jens Lauritsen EpiData Association Denmark PS - as mentioned previously: Please acknowledge the hard work done to accomplish this when possible. The planning and design is done by T.Christiansen and I in collaboration. We discuss with key users and I have secured funding from those mentioned on the funding page of the web - more on this aspect later. All specific internal design of the software routines and implementation of principles in the programming is done by T.Christiansen. pps: If for some reason you need an installation version we can inform you how to get that - at least for the current test - it is a safety measure not to deliver installation versions, since a number of users previously installed the test version over the public release version - and had severe problems of project data that could no longer be used (without efforts that only few know of). Do also remember that we have NO WAY of regaining data if you forget a password.