How Surveys Are Stored and Versioned#
Surveys Are Made of Items#
A survey in Colectica Questionnaires is not one opaque file. It is a graph of items: the instrument itself, its sequences, its questions, its code lists, and so on, following the DDI Lifecycle standard. Each item carries a three-part identity: an agency, a unique identifier, and a version number.
The agency names the organization that owns the item, in reverse domain form, such as org.meridian.nso.
This is why the application asks for an Agency ID in its Settings dialog before you create surveys: every item you make is stamped as yours, and items from different organizations can never collide.
Item identity is what makes reuse possible. When a question is used in two surveys, both surveys reference the same identified item rather than holding two copies. An editor for such a question tells you how many places use it, because an edit is an edit to all of them. When you want an independent copy instead, the application makes one with a new identity, which is what Replace This Item With a Copy does.
The Local Workspace#
Opening a survey checks it out into your local workspace, a private store on your machine. Save writes there, and only there. You can design, restructure, and test entirely offline; nothing leaves your machine until you publish. Saving updates your pending working version in place, so saving twice does not create two versions.
Repositories and Publishing#
A Colectica Repository is a shared server that holds published items. Publishing, through the Synchronize dialog, sends your changed items there; each published change mints a new version with a date, an author, and your message. Version history, comparison, comments, and reuse across a team are all built on these published versions.
Because your copy and the repository evolve independently, three states can arise, and the Synchronize dialog shows exactly these three: changes only you have, updates only the repository has, and conflicts where both sides changed the same item. Conflict resolution is per item: keep yours as a newer version, or adopt the repository’s and drop your local change to that item.
The same model explains the Update available tag on a card: the repository has a newer version of that specific item, and your survey can adopt it without touching anything else.
Why DDI#
DDI Lifecycle is a metadata standard used by statistical agencies, archives, and research groups. Storing surveys as DDI items means a questionnaire designed here is not locked in: the DDI 3.3 export can be loaded by Colectica Designer, published to any Colectica Repository, and consumed by other standards-aware tools. Deterministic identity also makes exchanges repeatable, since importing the same items again updates them rather than duplicating them.