Patent ID: 7599956

Claim:
A method for conducting an online survey having one or more questions, the method comprising: maintaining a survey database, the database comprising the one or more questions and data identifying an input field type for each question; receiving a request for the online survey; in response to the request for the electronic survey, determining whether a previously compiled class file should be utilized to respond to the request, the previously compiled class file being separate from a survey database such that altering the online survey only requires altering the survey database and not the previously compiled class file; in response to determining that the previously compiled class file should not be utilized to respond to the request, creating an executable class file capable of generating markup language for displaying the one or more questions and an at least one input field for each of the one or more questions in a web browser; generating the markup language by executing the class file; and returning the markup language as a response to the request for the online survey.