Blaise 4.8 Enterprise
Blaise 4.8 Enterprise includes numerous additions and enhancements to the basic system, and also a new server-based solution for CATI surveys, a redesign of the web interviewing architecture and introduces a new tool for CASI surveys called BASIL.
With the growing need for internet surveys, scalability is an important item on the Blaise agenda. Blaise 4.8 Enterprise offers a scalable, multi-tier, enterprise-wide solution for internet surveys. Internet surveys can now be distributed over several Web servers, while the time-consuming execution of Blaise rules can be executed by several Rules servers.
The internet architecture uses the aforementioned Blaise Data Server technology to efficiently store the collected data in either an RDBMS or a Blaise database.
Special attention has been given to the layout of internet questionnaires. Blaise 4.8 Enterprise gives you more control over the layout of internet questionnaires, improves support for Blaise tables and introduces the concept of grouping, which gives you a tool for working with special layouts like Group Tables, MultiColumn and OtherSpecify (as introduced in Blaise 4.7) and Matrix questions. Support for Blaise menu files in internet questionnaires has been improved.
To support increasing demands for better-looking CASI applications, Blaise has added the Basil tool to its product suite. With Basil, you can create good-looking interactive applications that benefit from the rules engine of Blaise and the procedural power of Maniplus. Basil features a new way of defining the layout of your application, giving you full control over the end result.
The Blaise Data Server technology and related new architectural features for CATI and CAWI included in Blaise 4.8 are optional capabilities. Blaise 4.8 fully supports the existing technologies and structural features of Blaise 4.7 and earlier releases. Existing Blaise data models and applications may be implemented in Blaise 4.8 without any significant changes.
Blaise 4.8 Enterprise is the successor of Blaise 4.7 Enterprise. It contains the Blaise basic system, the Blaise Component Pack and the Blaise Internet Services. Here we describe the differences in the Blaise basic system part of 4.8 compared to the previous version (4.7). All differences are listed below.