A forms engine allows data sharing between customizable on-line forms,
such as college admissions applications. Before applying, an applicant
opens an account with a third party application servicer. After the
applicant completes an application for one institution, the data is saved
in a data base and automatically populates fields in subsequent
application forms. The form for each institution is created from a form
description file. Each form is branded for its institution and forms for
different institutions differ in appearance and content so that the
presence of the third party servicer is transparent to the applicant.The
system is extensible without programming, allowing new applicant
attributes to be readily incorporated into the system and allowing the
content and appearance of the application to be readily changed by
changing the description file. The use of aliases for applicant
attributes permits data to be readily shared between forms even though
labeled and arranged differently on different forms. Information stored
about each attribute allows the specification of data validation rules
and data sharing and grouping rules, as well as dependency rules that
permit application page content to depend on applicant's responses on a
previous page.