Figure 2. Overview of OxMaR.

The system is accessed by the user through a simple web page (Web Page 1). When the form on this page is submitted by the user the first Perl script generates a second web page (Web Page 2) which displays a summary of the data that the user has input. If the user confirms that this is correct, then the information about the new participant is submitted to the second Perl script which performs the allocation procedure. This Perl script reads information from a text file about the previous allocations and generates an allocation decision for the new participant. The script then generates output in the form of a web page (Web Page 3) for the user which informs them of the allocation decision and a series of emails to the user, the principal investigator and one or more other members of the research team. The script also updates the text file with information about the new allocation and writes this to a further backup text file. The email to the principal investigator contains all the information about this and previous participants and so serves as a further backup of the study.