Need a suggestion

My boss has this idea. He wants us to be able to allow the user to make changes to a form, save it as an electronic version on his local machine, then email it back to us. PDF is by default, not editable....excel and word are ok--but then you can edit everything on the document--not just the information the user is supposed to enter.

He does not want to use a database for it. I've suggested a web-based form, which the user fills out, then it's stored to a database, but he doesn't want to have to maintain the database table. In his defense, we're talking about 7 pages, with about 15-20 items per page, so it's a fairly substantial form. It also appears that the first person to access it may not be the only one with access to it--and maintaining security and still allowing multiple users in an organization to be able to view a file may be kind of interesting.

Seems to me though that the idea of having a website with an Oracle datbase behind it is to allow a page to update that table, but hey...

Any ideas?

I have an idea. Have a "suggestion box" where someone emails suggestions about changes to the form. It could easily be an email address.

I mean... really... this is a web form, right? Are the people making suggestions web developers? Probably not. :p

The fact that it's a "fairly substantial form" further reinforces my suggestion, to start with. :)

If it's a .pdf, then that goes double... unless all of your users have Adobe Writer installed... if that's the case and it's not a webform, they should just submit their own modified forms for use, pending approval by your boss.

The purpose for this is to allow clients to configure some settings for how they want my company to manage their business. They are not changing a form for me to re-display for them.

I believe it's going to be an excel spreadsheet. Then, they can download it, change it to their heart's content, save off a copy for themselves, and email it back in.

There will be no database involved--unless they want to be able to come back to the page later and have it automatically see the settings they've selected.

I know, I know...very sloppy, not the most technologically savvy way of doing it....but that's what the client and my boss want.