I've read some topics about GraphQL, and one of the great features I like is you can specify fields you want (Client End).
I'm thinking maybe I can also add it into REST API. I look around and find there has already such specification: fetching-sparse-fieldsets
So I'm trying to add such feature in Symfony. (Especially, in FOSRestBundle+JSMSerializer).
But I'm not quite sure whether it is valuable or not. Can someone give you advice?
That is a question you should ask to your API users and your customer. It might be useful for the API user, but it has a lot of downsides:
By building it yourself, you spend a lot of time by developing, testing and maintaining this 'optional' feature. Is the customer willing to pay? (YAGNI)
As mentioned above, you must maintain the code for this feature, you cannot remove it unless you decide to release a new API version. As external packages change, your code might require an update aswell.
It can become difficult when troubleshooting. API users might be trying to retrieve a field that isn't specified in the API URL (ofcourse these issues arise after project transfers to other developers). Questions can come up why some data isn't available, but is present in API documentation.
Especially the first one in the list is incredibly important. Don't build features that the customer does not need. Personally I always return all accessible data available, even null values. The API users decide what to do with that data. Bandwidth isn't such a problem these days I guess.
I have a basic model set up but it appears that the Alexa beta builder expects the design of the model to be up front with explicit lists of possible answers to requests. However, the Jeopardy game on that platform appears to allow new answers from day to day and I am supposing they don't need to update their model each day. Can someone shed light on this process?
I would like to be able to:
Launch intent to start conversation
Handle back and forth within web service response and request
Handle basic stop/start from Alexa
How does the middle portion (response/request) get modeled up front?
Currently, you need to provide a list of expected values for each of your slot types (a slot type may be question_response in this case).
Not sure how Jeopardy works but I have a couple ideas:
They provide huge lists of possible answers (and they update them from time to time). I bet there is no one writing new questions every day, they have a pool of questions and they can anticipate the answers to those.
They have access to an API that is not open to the general public (as do people who are participating in the social bot challenge) or are allowed to use the deprecated LITERAL slot type.
After setting up the IBM Watson Conversation service on my Raspberry Pi today I was disappointed to see that I'd have to write out every possible input (intent) and output (entity). Chalk this up to my extreme naivety around machine learning, But isn't there a way to tie into an existing set of conversation capabilities?
For example, I'm sure Watson already knows all the words for Hello and their proper responses. Or how to answer a variety of silly questions. Is there any way to tap into the Watson we all saw on Jeopardy?
Thanks for your help!
There are a number of options here.
System Entities
These are pre-defined to allow you to understand certain common concepts. Numbers, Currency and Dates are the available ones at the moment, but there are more coming.
Entites
You can also pull public lists and import as CSV. For example: http://data.okfn.org/data/core/country-list . You may need to check the licensing before using though.
Intents
As you mentioned there is no pre-defined intents. But there are two solutions available that augment conversation.
First is "Watson Virtual Agent". This is a SaaS that contains pre-defined training sets for certain industries, as well as custom UI you can slot into your application. It's not cheap, but you can get a trial to play with it.
The other option is "Project Intu". It's still experimental, but it's purpose is to help in building robots/IOT devices. It contains pre-defined chit chat and some off topic stuff.
They have a "TJ Bot" project which can be used with a raspberry pi.
Is there any (smooth) possibility for multiple users to collaborate on a Twine project?
I've just been introduced to twinery.org, and thinking about the possibilities of using it to teach programming in basic school. My colleagues and I thought it would be an interesting project for pupils to collaborate on a story, making perhaps one passage each.
Can we do this in a smoother way than asking them to send their code to a teacher who adds it together and publishes?
Anyone with experience of this, or thoughts of how I can go about?
2 users will never be able to work on the same story cause of the pid field inside the HTML file. users would need to alternate before grabbing the latest changes. I withdraw my answer.
I'm a statistician by trade and I'd like some recommendations on how to set up a website that can collect data into a database. For personal use, I use Google Forms to collect data, and everything gets populated into a spreadsheet. However, this may not be appropriate in a more professional setting, especially when we have multiple pages/forms. I imagine two uses:
A website where I can send the link to others so they can fill out, similar to Google Forms.
A website where only authorized users can log in to fill out data. Think of a setting where patients are followed periodically in a research study. It'd be cool to have the clinician enter the data directly into the database as he/she fills out the forms as opposed to having another data analyst transcribe his written forms into the database.
The obvious solution would be to hire a web developer. However, I like doing things myself when they are manageable. I imagine a web developer would have to know html, php, and database knowledge (eg, MySQL or PostgreSQL). My experience in these are limited to setting up a wordpress blog on my linux server. My experience with html is also limited as I use emacs org-mode to generate them from plain text. I hope to hear about solutions with a minimal learning curve. My preference of course would be free open source software and Linux-based, but I'd like to hear all available solutions (our data manager is a Windows user).
I recently read a post on Linux Journal that mentions REDCap, but it seems you have to get institutional permission to use.
I also tagged "R" on this post as I'd like to hear what R users are doing about data collection. I'll ultimately analyze the data with R, but all data analysis begins with the scientific question and data collection.
Thanks!
UPDATE 10/4/2010: Thanks everyone for the responses so far. It appears most of the third-party solutions proposed so far has data housed in a database hosted by the vendor. I'd like to house all data in our SQL Server. That is, data entry from the web enters the database in real time, ready for data analysis.
Maybe the limesurvey.org project is of interest ...
It sounds to me like you've got yourself a med study. There are a plethora of concerns that come to mind just from what you've described you want to do. Not the least of which is privacy. Where is it going to be hosted? Have you received consent from the patients to be collecting and transmitting their information electronically? What data are you storing, if any, that could combine to present their identity.
Personally, I steer clear of DIY online data collection tools. I pay a firm, like Ipsos, Research Now/E-Rewards, to program and manage data collection using questionnaires that I have designed. The reason is, knowing how to design research and analyze data is one thing. But if you've been trained in statistics - I can safely argue that you "don't know shit" about data collection. Sure you may know a bunch about sampling theory, but when it comes to getting data in - it's best to leave it to the pros.
There are a number of "industrial quality" online data collection tools available.
Confirmit (Pretty much the gold standard for online data collection)
DASH (Smaller following, but incredibly flexible)
There are also purely web based solutions, some of which are free (not that I would recommend using them)
QuestionPro
SurveyMonkey
Zoomerang
Although, unless you're doing a study with over 50 patients, I would just recommend getting the Physicians or their assistants to fill out Excel sheets and send them to your co.
Also, it's unlikely that you'll need to set-up a username/password system. What you want is referred to as an "open-link". Where respondents click a link and enter information, identifier info can be added by the respondent. You don't need a password because people can only INPUT information, not read it.
Most of the systems I mentioned above work on the idea of emailing a respondent (a clinician) with a link to a web based survey. Which could be easily adapted to your specific needs and act as a reminder to the clinician to fill out the form.
If your question types are simple. I'm sure you could hire a programmer to put together a website that has the forms you need behind an authorized front end. PHP/MySQL would likely do the trick. But, I would double check the privacy laws in your jurisdiction surrounding medical research before going ahead.
I have conducted medial research using an online form (actually two of them). My questions were quite discrete and particular to the disease I was researching.
Previously in a related project, I had created two or three page questionnaires which were printed and then subjects and surgeons filled out the forms and our research coordinator would enter them into our database. It was a lot of work with lots of room for error. I did not like it. Online forms were much better.
I used SurveyGizmo and was happy with it. I looked at lots of options about two years ago. Google Forms did not exist at that time. I went with SurveryGizmo primarily because they had a a statement (attestation) that they were compliant with HIPAA. I could not ensure security such as ssl connections with the other websites. However in order to get myself into that capability (https connections) I had to buy the enterprise level eventhough on every other capability I could have used the free service. Also SurveyGizmo offered a 50% reduction for non-profits which our research institute qualified for.
SurveryGizmo was easy to design and put into production without having to program myself. It was easy to download the data in csv format and read that straight into R. Although I had some weird issues that I needed help with. I had to use the "old" format for export so that it came as a straigtforward csv. Furthermore, the csv file had the odd feature of the the first TWO rows being header rows. But I solved that problem with the help of stackoverflow.
SurveryGizmo has fantastic logic and piping that enbabled me to only ask relevant questions and thereby not waste the time of my respondents and even more importantly, there were no irrelevant questions to confuse respondents.
Finally, I was able to use SurveyGizmo in such a way that I could also track our (research staff) fulfillment and logistics. For instance we got notification when there were new potential subjects who were interested in participating. We were able to note FedEx tracking numbers along with the records of the corresponding subjects.
Basically it worked well.
The safest platform for collecting confidential survey data is Confirmit. There is a learning curve involved here- you will be coding in VisualSQL, which is only used in Confirmit. The survey responses will export to csv files, where you can analyze your results in R.
If you are collecting any confidential data, or data where respondents need unique access links so they can only see their own version of the survey, you will want to use Confirmit. The data is housed in Confirmit's data center, but their data is much more secure than other vendors (i.e., a third party will not be able to hack into your survey and see an individual's responses, or intercept the data that is being sent from your respondent to Confirmit).