Chapter 33. Working with Databases
Our form design is complete. The data is ready to be collected, but where are we going to put it? Leaving the form data in the PDF file looks nice but is not an efficient way to store the information. The design elements of the form take a significant amount of the file size. Each time we store another copy we are wasting additional storage space needed for the form itself. If we extract the information from the form design and store only the data, the amount of space needed is greatly reduced. Having all of the data in a single location also allows us to analyze the collected information.
After all the time and effort we put into designing our forms it would be a shame to not have a well-designed storage facility to house the data. A database provides a permanent organized storage facility to place all of our form data for easy retrieval and reporting.
Database programs, like other software programs, are available from a variety of vendors and range in capabilities. The enterprise-level databases reside on a server and are usually managed by an IT department. The smaller desktop database programs are run on a single machine. The database program selected to store the data normally depends on the available resources.
Getting data from the form to the database for storage can be achieved with an export /import process or a direct connection ...
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