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Cameron and David hit the high points, but I have one more suggestion.As David said, using Outlook forms is very brittle because all the recipients need Outlook to respond. That was my first thought when I saw your question.You don't need to necessarily use web-based email though, as Cameron notes. And BTW Cameron's right - Google Docs (aka Google Drive now) work great for this purpose.I'd also take a look at SurveyMonkey - super simple to create web based forms that record all the responses (whether it's a survey per se or not).

Go for legacy relational databases (RDBMS) when:The data is well structured, and lends itself to a tabular arrangement (rows and columns) in a relational database. Typical examples: bank account info, customer order info, customer info, employee info, department info etc etc.The main thing to understand is that data is divided into multiple entities: CUSTOMER, ORDERS, ACCOUNT, DEPARTMENT, EMPLOYEE and so on.Each entity is ideally represented as a table in a relational database with multiple rows, and fixed number of columns (initially). You can always add/drop column later on.For a given record, the information is stored as separate fields (attributes or column values) in the corresponding row.Another aspect of the above point is : schema oriented data model. When you design a data model (tables, relationships etc) for a potential use of RDBMS, you need to come up with a well defined schema: there will be these many tables, each table having a known set of columns that store data in known typed format (CHAR, NUMBER, BLOB etc).Similarly the relationships between the tables (eg: FOREIGN KEY constraint) should also be well established.Constraints on individual tables should also be enforced: NOT NULL, UNIQUE KEY etc etc.The data model is important since that is what the application will work with. Developers will write code with a mental model of how data is stored in the RDBMS.Very Important: Consider whether the data is transactional in nature. In other words, whether the data will be stored, accessed and updated in the context of transactions providing the ACID semantics or is it okay to compromise some/all of these properties.It is _imperative_ to understand the meaning and implications (especially on performance and scalability) of each of the ACID properties.Go with ACID only when the implied meaning makes complete sense in the context of your application.All legacy relational databases (Oracle, SQLServer, DB2) by default provide heavy weight support for both simple and complex (nested, autonomous, single shot, multiple statement update) transactions.Correctness is also important and any compromise is _unacceptable_. This stems from the fact that in most NoSQL databases, consistency is traded off in favor of performance and scalability (points on NoSQL databases are elaborated below).Relational Databases will never try to compromise things like consistency, durability, recovery even if it comes at the cost of high operation latency.The concept of ACID transactions is very important and any RDBMS is expected to strictly adhere to the protocol.There is no strong/compelling need for a scale out architecture ; a database that linearly scales out (horizontal scaling) to multiple nodes in a cluster.RDBMS does not natively provide distributed database like architecture which can take care of things like automatic data distribution or partitioning, replication across multiple nodes in a cluster. Additional code needs to be written to support such things. Sharding is an option, but it is a user level construct and hence needs to be done manually. Moreover the distribution strategy needs to be flexible with minimal impacts of cluster resize. These things are well taken care of in distributed NoSQL databases.Its not that we cannot have distributed relational databases. We can certainly have them, but they provide limited scalability. This is mainly because of strict adherence to ACID protocol (during distributed transactions) that needs to maintain single copy consistency across all the replica nodes in the cluster. This affects both performance and availability and also increases the operation latency.Relational Databases are more suitable for single instance deployments because they are not designed as a highly scalable distributed system from ground up.These are the reasons why people usually prefer “vertical scaling” in relational databases.The use case is not for “high speed data ingestion”.If the client applications are expecting to quickly stream large amounts of data in/out of the database then relational database may not be a good choice since they are not really designed for scaling write heavy workloads.In order to achieve ACID properties, lots of additional background work is done especially in writer (INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE) code paths. This definitely affects performance.The use case is not for “storing enormous amounts of data in the range of petabytes”.As a single running instance, an RDBMS will have only limited resources in terms of storage, I/O bandwidth.On the other hand, a distributed system that stores data across multiple physical nodes can address the growth. It should be capable of storing large amounts of data in a more convenient manner by distributing data (and the load) and replicating it on multiple machines.Data is queried (using SQL) in all forms of simple and complex queries: joins across multiple tables, nested queries, support for clauses like ORDER BY, GROUP BY etc.Go for NoSQL databases when:There is no fixed (and predetermined) schema that data fits in:Either data is completely unstructured (videos, images or any other binary files) or it is semi-structured where the data has some form of hierarchy within itself (XML docs, JSON, BSON).The tabular model of rows and columns where each row has the same set of columns does not suit the application needs. In NoSQL databases, each row can have its own flexible structure of the record and that may vary from one row to another. This is what the “Wide Column NoSQL databases” provide using a design based on column family. Cassandra, HBase, BigTable are some examples.Another possible option is where the storage and access model is simple: a key -> value mapping. In case of “Key Value NoSQL databases”, the Value part is typically an opaque array of bytes which is not interpreted by the database. You store and access records _only_ by key (primary key). The Value is usually a BLOB object (videos, songs, images etc) with no logical hierarchy within itself. DynamoDB, Riak, Redis, Aerospike are some examples.Even in the case of key -> value mapping, there is some level of flexibility provided by “Document based NoSQL databases” where the value is usually a single semi-structured document (XML, JSON). The access need not be key based. You can index various sub-fields of the document. The real flexibility comes from the fact that internal structure of a document is not fixed from one row to another. Information and the structure of a JSON doc might vary from one document to another document. CouchBase, MongoDB are some examples.Mental model of a JSON document is simple and allows us to map our relational objects as nested sub-structures within a single JSON document.In relation to the schema, the one big difference is that in relational databases, database imposes a statically defined schema that the application needs to work with. Relational databases support schema changes, but they are very rigid as it is usually a blocking operation on the entire table. ADD/DROP column(s) to/from a relational table will affect all the rows and is a blocking operation.On the other hand, NoSQL databases do not predefine the data model and tell the application what it needs to work with. In fact it is the other way round. The application defines the data model, and stores data as different objects of varying structures - BLOB, XML, JSON, BSON etc.Scalability, Performance (high throughput and low operation latency), Continuous Availability are very important requirements to be met by the underlying architecture of database.NoSQL databases are designed as distributed databases from ground up. The native architecture supports horizontal scaling where data is automatically partitioned across multiple nodes, and further replicated to nodes in different data centers.ACID is not very important. NoSQL databases favor availability and trade off consistency. Thus they do not advocate strict adherence to ACID protocol. For example, DynamoDB paper suggests maximum availability where the application is able to write data as long as even one node is up and running.I am not saying that NoSQL databases do not support transactions. Some of them support simple transactions, but in most cases the burden is on the application code to properly implement serialization.They are BASE systems (Basically Available Soft State Eventually Consistent) where additional mechanisms are adopted to synchronize the replicas and resolve conflicts in the background as single copy consistency can potentially be violated.Applications should be able to tolerate stale or multiple conflicting versions of data. It is possible that a read() does not return the result of most recent write() that got completed before read began.Favoring A and P from CAP theorem yields high scalability, availability and low response time. They adopt flexible data distribution techniques like consistent hashing which provides incremental scalability with smooth handling of cluster resize.They mostly have a decentralized architecture as opposed to master-slave style. Decentralized design eliminates single point of failure, and the complexity of electing/re-electing a leader. Any node is capable of servicing the read and write request.Good choice for “High Speed Data Ingestion”. Such applications (for example IoT style) which generate millions of data points in a second and need a database capable of providing extreme write scalability.We don’t get such benefits in relational databases because they need to preserve the transactional nature of operations.NoSQL databases can support high speed writes because they do not provide strict ACID transactions. Even if one out of every 100 writes is lost (or is not propagated to every replica) during such high speed ingestion, it is still okay.The inherent ability to horizontally scale allows to store large amounts of data across commodity servers in the cluster. They usually use low cost resources, and are able to linearly add compute and storage power as the demand grows.Some of these NoSQL databases (Cassandra, Couchbase) support SQL like queries through their own query languages (CQL in Cassandra, N1QL in Couchbase). They also support Object Oriented API based access - simple get(), put() operations to access and store items in the data store.

It’s a long story, so please bear with me:As a mother of a 2.6 year old kid who had a normal/vaginal delivery, let me share my experience. I conceived when I was 34 years old, and delivered normally at 35 years. This was a deliberate decision, this late pregnancy, for a number of reasons that would make this answer unnecessarily lengthy. I am just 5 ft in height and weighed 51 kgs before pregnancy. My son was born 2.65 kgs in weight. During my pregnancy, I changed two doctors because I wanted a normal delivery and not a C Section. These doctors were a bit unwilling to try normal delivery,probably due to my age. When I finally went to my gynae who delivered my son, the first question he asked was “ Why did you come to me after 2 doctors? What do you expect me to do?” I replied, “ All I want is for you to try and perform a normal delivery, but of course the final call would be yours and if you feel there’s no way out, you can always proceed for a C Section. The other doctors I visited weren’t willing to try it even, I heard you are one of the few ones who encourage normal delivery and I have come to you.” He said “ I can’t promise anything, it’s too early to say and last moment decision changes are possible. “ I said “ I don’t want you to promise, I just want you to try it before proceeding for a C Section. “ I lived in a different city and travelled to Kolkata every month, 124 kms by road via public bus for a check up. At 35, I had no problems of obesity, thyroid, blood pressure or other life style diseases, I attended office full time till my 9th month, I stayed alone and did everything that I used to before pregnancy, right from shopping to cooking and exercising. My gynae had permitted me to continue with exercises suitable during pregnancy, and told me that as long as I felt comfortable travelling, I can do it. Since I stayed on the 3rd floor, without any lift, climbing the stairs up and down was additional exercise for me. At my husband’s in Kolkata too, our flat is on the 3rd Floor, without any lift, and therefore it was another round of exercise.I walked two kms everyday during my last month of pregnancy till the previous day of my delivery. Luckily for me, I never had any dizziness, vomiting, weakness, or felt any repulsion for any food, neither did I have any cravings nor hunger pangs, except for my growing belly, there was no way for me to understand that I have a baby growing inside my tummy. During advanced stage, I had pain in my legs which went away a bit through exercises, and the baby’s kicking finally increased.During my 9th month check up, my doc told me that I should now stop travelling and take leave from office. Accordingly, I packed my things and took maternity leave and came to my husband’s one November morning. It was then that my hands and legs started itching, so much so that I was unable to sleep at night. It was my 38th week, and I went to visit my doc and he suggested some tests. It turned out to be an increase in liver enzymes which is normal during a pregnancy, but my doctor advised me to get admitted the next day. He said clearly, that it was normal, but the baby’s heart beat might stop any moment because of this and he didn’t want to take a risk when everything has proceeded so smoothly. During my check ups, I used to see a couple visit who were expecting, and one day after they left, my doc told me: “ People are so full of surprises. The lady before you can easily have a normal delivery, yet she’s afraid of the pain and insists on a C Section. The baby’s head has turned, everything is in place, yet the mother isn’t willing. And here you are, insisting on a normal when I don’t even know whether that will be possible or not. “ The doctor gave me options, and I elected induced labour and then if there was no success after two attempts, then a C Section.I got admitted the next day after my doc visit, and two of my close friends and my husband got me admitted to a private hospital where my doc practiced. I was admitted in the evening, and I almost had my entire dinner, and was about to have my dessert when the nurse informed me that the doctor has asked me not to eat. I was like “ I am almost finished, let me have the dessert atleast” but she said no. And so I missed my dessert. They performed an eco cardiogram ( if I remember correctly) and asked me to jot down everytime my baby kicked, and I did so. They said it was going fine. Then they induced me during 11 p.m. and asked me to try and get some sleep. So I slept. At around 4 a.m ,a mild pain started. It was surging after every 15 minutes. After some time, it became more pronounced, and I called the nurses. They probably checked my pressure and said everything was fine. The pain continued increasing and everytime it surged and fell, I was drained. The nurses tried soothing me, but man, it wasn’t something that could be soothed! At around 7 a.m. the pain got extremely severe, and there was no sign of the doctor, the nurses told me to call my husband, I somehow reached my mobile and called him and asked him to come. He asked, “ shall I come now?” to which I could only answer with a resounding scream. He hung up. To add salt to my pain, someone brought me a cup of morning tea, and I was incensed that someone thought I could sip at a cup of tea amidst this bone breaking pain! After one such contraction, when I dropped down to my pillow and was catching my breath, my doc sauntered in and catching me close my eyes said smiling “ can a labour patient afford to sleep?” and I muttered under my breath the choicest slangs I could think of as another contraction shook me. And then I cooled myself down saying “ don’t say these now, he might not want to deliver normally if he heard you speak that language, save it for later.” and I relented. My water finally broke, and when the doctor came to look for the membrane, I screamed out my lungs and he said “ Okay, I think I needn’t look” . The nurses came and probed and told the doctor that the baby’s head was still sideways, but I was ready to be taken into the labour room now. It was 8 a.m.In the labour room, my doc told me to hold my breath every time the contractions came, and push like I was having constipation and needed to finish my morning job. ( Yes he was very witty, but my condition didn’t allow me to thin k about it much). Finally, the baby’s head turned downwards, they checked my pressure and the baby’s heartbeat and said everything was fine, and sharp at 9:29 a.m. my boy came out. It was 5 and a half hours of labour. My first question to my doc was “ when can I have my breakfast? I am famished, you made me do a lot of work.” He said, “Soon. first you will have a cup of tea after an hour and then you will have normal breakfast and lunch and dinner.” Then I suddenly remembered my baby and asked “ Is it a boy or a girl?” The pediatrician in the meantime had wrapped him and given him his first dose of vaccine and said “ She’s pretty cool about it seems. Not bothered whether it’s a boy or a girl.” My gynae said “ It’s a boy.”I was released after two days. One of the nurse scolded me when immediately after my delivery in my bed, I was jumping around, thinking I was a C section patient. There were 26 babies delivered that day, and one of them was my room mate’s who had a C Section and was a nurse herself. I was the only one with a normal delivery. People sort of came to see me as “the woman who had a normal delivery”.At the end, I understood a few things:Lifestyle changes are a big reason why women find it difficult to deliver normally. Having thyroid, obesity etc just after 30 is a growing trend nowadays.Having normal physical activity helps a lot, eat healthy and exercise in moderation.Do your household work yourself as much as possible even if you have maids, no one died of it.Being a mother isn’t easy, so trying to escape labour pain won’t mean much. If nature has designed a way, it’s better to try that way unless medical reasons require surgical intervention.Doctor’s go for C Sections for a number of reasons, one of them being the patient party themselves insisting on it.I remembered this point later. My gynae told me this: you are as strong as you think yourself to be. What you think matters a lot. Which is why I wasn’t afraid to stay alone for 9 months at my work place, or travel every month, and do normal household work, I never felt I was weak or I wouldn’t be able to do all these. After all, I was pregnant, not sick!Lastly , I resumed normal life as soon as I delivered, and now after 2.6 years, I am back to my previous weight of 51–52 kgs through excercise and healthy eating and life has never been better!Thanks for your patience, I hope it wasn’t as long as my labour time!Edit: 1.1 k views in 2 hours and so many upvotes! Thanks a lot all of you!Edit 2: some have asked for photos personally. Posting two photos: 1 when my son was 3 months old, another recent at 2.6 years.Edit 3: wow! 70.3k views!! I am humbled.