Kiuchi T, Kaihara S
Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Faculty of Medicine, University of Tokyo, Japan.
Comput Methods Programs Biomed. 1997 Feb;52(2):129-38. doi: 10.1016/s0169-2607(96)01793-2.
The World Wide Web-based form is a promising method for the construction of an on-line data collection system for clinical and epidemiological research. It is, however, laborious to prepare a common gateway interface (CGI) program for each project, which the World Wide Web server needs to handle the submitted data. In medicine, it is even more laborious because the CGI program must check deficits, type, ranges, and logical errors (bad combination of data) of entered data for quality assurance as well as data length and meta-characters of the entered data to enhance the security of the server. We have extended the specification of the hypertext markup language (HTML) form to accommodate information necessary for such data checking and we have developed software named AUTOFORM for this purpose. The software automatically analyzes the extended HTML form and generates the corresponding ordinary HTML form, 'Makefile', and C source of CGI programs. The resultant CGI program checks the entered data through the HTML form, records them in a computer, and returns them to the end-user. AUTOFORM drastically reduces the burden of development of the World Wide Web-based data entry system and allows the CGI programs to be more securely and reliably prepared than had they been written from scratch.
基于万维网的表单是构建用于临床和流行病学研究的在线数据收集系统的一种很有前景的方法。然而，为每个项目编写一个通用网关接口（CGI）程序很费力，而万维网服务器需要处理提交的数据。在医学领域，这更是费力，因为CGI程序必须检查输入数据的缺陷、类型、范围和逻辑错误（数据的不良组合）以确保质量，还要检查输入数据的长度和元字符以增强服务器的安全性。我们扩展了超文本标记语言（HTML）表单的规范，以容纳此类数据检查所需的信息，并为此开发了名为AUTOFORM的软件。该软件会自动分析扩展的HTML表单，并生成相应的普通HTML表单、“Makefile”和CGI程序的C源代码。生成的CGI程序通过HTML表单检查输入的数据，将其记录在计算机中，并将数据返回给最终用户。AUTOFORM极大地减轻了基于万维网的数据录入系统的开发负担，并使CGI程序的编写比从头编写更安全、可靠。
