| Index | Working principles

## Introduction

People work on computers, oftenly several hours a day. Additionally almost everyone has a mobile phone in his computerless time, a Palmtop or a similar mobile device. Personal data which accrue over the day could easily be evaluated if all these ways would be made usable.
The user should be able to choose between the things that are at his disposal. These things could be very different depending on his location, the day and daytime: on a PC he can enter his data directly with pdr or send himself an e-mail, perhaps using a command line tool like sendmail or from inside an office application. With his mobile phone he can also send e-mails or SMS. Maybe he uses measurement devices collecting data in a private memory - later he can transmit them over USB, Bluetooth, Infrared or something else onto a computer. And perhaps he has already a software producing data in a usable XML format. All these ways must be equivalent and open.
The initial situation is based on the following assumptions:

1. We have at least one convenient medium for getting personal data on a computer and the effort to use it is acceptable.
2. Data input and data evaluation do not happen at the same time, especially not in real time. We get data (possibly much) more frequently than they have to be evaluated.
3. That's why data input must be fast, easy and mobile. This is the most important criterion for acceptance.
4. For data evaluation the time need is much less critical. There we have criteria like capability, effectiveness and configurability.
5. Data evaluation means the creation of static reports and diagrams.
6. The database contains personal data. So the database should be hosted by the user.

Background: The initial idea was to log individual medical data (blood sugar, blood pressure, body temperature, heart rate, weight and also medication). Especially diabetics taking Insulin measure and collect a lot of such data every day, and it's very interesting for them (and for physicians and specialists) to track and evaluate and comment them.
The applications are not specialized on medical use cases. You can use them also for technical, sports, weather, environmental or financial data, for example for jogging distances and times or for the fuel consumption of your car, the driven distances and the cost's. All what you need is a continuous flow of numeric data.

| Index | Working principles