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QuickForm is a web based application that can be used to store any information that does not have complex relationships. Once the QuickForm administrator has created a database, the application allows any user to list, add, modify, view and delete records in that database.

The QuickForm administrator can create multiple databases. Database creation is a fairly easy task for anyone who knows a little XML. All the administrator has to do is save the database configuration file in the appropriate directory and the QuickForm application does the rest. This makes configuring the application very easy and quick. The down side is that it allow only a minimal control over the look and feel of the web pages.

The database configuration file contains information about the various fields in the database and how they should be shown to the user. A field can be one of the following types:

• Single line text field
• Multi-line text field
• Single-select list
• Multi-select list

The application uses files to store the records (instead of storing them in a relational database like Oracle). This makes the application easy to configure, allows the administrator to change the database fields on the fly and reduces the total cost of the solution. The downside is that this limits the number of records you can have in a database. The limit will largely depend on the speed of the machine on which this application is being run. In general a user will see performance degradation if a database contains more than a thousand records. In that case you might want to consider splitting the database into multiple databases or not use this application.

QuickForm is based on the Java Servlet technology. To run QuickForm you will need the following:
• Java SDK - the application has been tested with J2SE 1.4.1_03, but any Java version that has JAXP should work.
• A Servlet Engine - the application has been tested with Tomcat version 4.1.24, but the application does not use any fancy features so almost any servlet engine should work.