Technical platform for Question and answer system

Question

Hello everone!
We are looking for a technology solutions to realize a <b>question and answer module</b>.
Short discription of the functionality we are looking for:
- member can post a question
- this is forwarded to all members via email
- direct answers via email are returned to asker and to the system (--> automatically generate Q&A list)
- system should import/be integrated with distribution list members
I have heard that some requirements will be met by JIVE forums software which comes with NetWeaver 2004s, but I dont know any details (when? where to test?).
Now I wanted to ask if you know a system like this or have experience with question and answer systems and can give us some hints. Would be very nice to hear from you.
Kind regards
Tilman
Business Consulting Knowledge Management

Answer 1

Here's another variant. You're going to have some answers that are the same for multiple questions. Standard text like 'The SYSTEM tablespace'. Now for some questions that is the correct answer and for others it is the incorrect answer.
So now what we have is:
create table questions (q_id number, q_text varchar2(255), primary key (q_id))
create table answers (a_id number, a_text varchar2(255), primary key (a_id))
create table q_a
(q_id number
    , a_id number
    , a_order char(1)
    , correct_yn char(1)
    , primary key (q_id, a_id)
    , check (a_order in ('A', 'B', 'C', 'D'))
    , check ( correct_yn in ('Y', 'N')))
/Obviously we need foreign keys too. You also need a check for uniqueness of the answers' ordering; a recent entry on the Amis blog could help you here. While your at it you need to check that every question has the correct number of putative answers and at least one correct answer.
Cheers, APC