TITLE: Making sense of the ODK ecosystem
DATE: 2021-01-20
AUTHOR: John L. Godlee
====================================================================


I've been trying to make sense of all the different components
which make up the OpenRosa/ODK ecosystem. Here is a tidied version
of my notes.

XForms

 [XForms]: https://www.w3.org/TR/xforms/

A W3C XML standard for form specification. It is intended to be
integrated into other markup languages such as XHTML, and is more
flexible than a basic HTML web-form.

ODK (Open Data Kit)

 [ODK (Open Data Kit)]: https://opendatakit.org/

A project which produces various software to author, collect, and
manage mobile data collection. They maintain the ODK XForms
standard. Originally sponsored by Google.

ODK XForms

 [ODK XForms]: https://getodk.github.io/xforms-spec/

A reduced version of the XForms specification. Initially developed
by the OpenRosa Consortium and now forked and maintained by the ODK
project.

ODK Collect

 [ODK Collect]: https://docs.getodk.org/collect-intro/

An Android app used to complete ODK XForms and submit responses to
a remote server.

ODK Central

 [ODK Central]: https://docs.getodk.org/central-intro/

Successor to the now unmaintained ODK Aggregate, a server software
for managing ODK Xforms. ODK Cloud provides paid-for hosted ODK
Central instances with regular updates, security, and support.

 [ODK Aggregate]: https://docs.getodk.org/aggregate-intro/
 [ODK Cloud]: https://getodk.org/#odk-cloud

ODK Briefcase

 [ODK Briefcase]: https://docs.getodk.org/briefcase-intro/

Desktop application for macOS, Windows, and Linux. Used to pull,
push, and export forms on ODK servers such as ODK Central and ODK
Aggregate. Can also pull forms directly from ODK Collect from a
connected Android device.

ODK Build

 [ODK Build]: https://build.getodk.org/

A drag-and-drop style form builder web-app for creating ODK XForms.
A downloadable version of ODK Build is available for macOS and
Windows.

 [downloadable version of ODK Build]:
https://github.com/getodk/build

ODK-X

 [ODK-X]: https://odk-x.org/

An experimental suite of software for collecting and managing data
on mobile platforms, inspired by ODK and maintained by an
overlapping group of developers. Implements a mixture of survey
forms and Javascript-based apps, with the goal of allowing data
managers to easily create bespoke and flexible mobile data
collection platforms. ODK-X Survey is most analagous to
ODK-Collect, but uses HTML, CSS and Javascript rather than ODK
XForms to define form logic.

 [ODK-X Survey]: https://docs.odk-x.org/survey-using/

JavaRosa

 [JavaRosa]: https://bitbucket.org/javarosa/javarosa/wiki/Home

A Java library developed by the OpenRosa Consortium that implements
the ODK XForms specification and renders forms. ODK Collect uses
ODK JavaRosa, a fork of the original JavaRosa to render forms.
JavaRosa is highly committed to ensuring that JavaRosa is usable on
low-resource devices. ODK JavaRosa is at the heart of many
applications which use ODK XForms.

 [ODK JavaRosa]: https://github.com/getodk/javarosa

KoboToolbox

 [KoboToolbox]: https://www.kobotoolbox.org/

A project "competing" with the ODK project which writes its own
tools to author, collect and manage mobile data collction.
KoboToolbox uses the ODK Xforms standard to create forms.
KoboToolbox focuses on providing an end-to-end hosted solution,
while ODK provides various components to allow the user to roll
their own custom solution. The ODK project and KoboToolbox aim to
keep the same pace and sync changes with each other.

KoboCollect

 [KoboCollect]:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.koboc.collect.andr
oid

An ostensibly re-branded version of the ODK Collect Android app.

XLSForms

 [XLSForms]: https://xlsform.org/

A form standard used to simplify the authoring of ODK XForms using
XLS files.

XLSForm Online

 [XLSForm Online]: https://getodk.org/xlsform/

A web-app that allows users to upload a compatible XLSForms file
and convert it to an ODK XForm. Can also preview the compiled ODK
XForm in the web-app using Enketo.

pyxform

 [pyxform]: https://github.com/XLSForm/pyxform

A Python library used to convert XLSForms to ODK XForms. A major
re-write of the older xls2xform. Many projects use pyxform in the
background to build ODK XForms.

 [xls2xform]: https://github.com/mvpdev/xls2xform/

XSLTForms

 [XSLTForms]: http://www.agencexml.com/xsltforms

An XForms implementation (not ODK XForms) which allows web-browsers
(client-side) to manipulate XForms. Generates HTML+Javascript
(AJAX) from XHTML+XForms.

Enketo

 [Enketo]: https://enketo.org/

A project which uses the ODK ecosystem to run a web-app to render
ODK XForms in a web browser. The web-app is used by a number of
other projects including ODK and KoboToolbox. There is also a
downloadable version of the Enketo web-app available.

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