Introduction

The vast majority of automated business processes that transfer information, such as transactions of any kind, involve a person who must review and sign off on the information before the process is completed. This gap in the automation of a process raises the issue of how to include people in the process without sacrificing productivity. Reviewers need to quickly read and comprehend relevant information - presenting it in the form of a data schema simply slows down the process. The alternative is to develop your own way of presenting this information, which is costly and time-consuming.

It's not necessary to reinvent the wheel: technology and standards already exist to involve people in automated processes. Adobe provides a solution that uses the standard Portable Document Format (PDF) and the eXtensible Markup Language (XML) to encapsulate and present information in a way that makes interaction easy and automated.

Adobe's combination of PDF and XML creates Intelligent Documents that can dynamically interact with core applications and integrate people into business processes. Adobe built this solution on a secure and flexible Java™2 Platform, Enterprise Edition™ (J2EE™ architecture. Adobe and IBM have teamed to optimize this platform on IBM WebSphere to extend the power and reach of enterprise applications inside and outside the firewall. The platform leverages Adobe Document Services to create Intelligent Documents and integrate them into business processes.

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Not your father's PDF

Originally PDF primarily appealed to graphic artists, designers, and publishers for color page layouts, but with more than 165 million PDF files available on the Internet today, it now has a more than ten-year track record as the de facto standard for electronic documents and forms. One reason it has been so successful is that it preserves the fonts, images, graphics, and layout of any source document, regardless of the application and platform used to create it. PDF files are compact and complete, and can be downloaded, shared, viewed offline, and printed by anyone with free Adobe Reader® software. To date, more than 500 million copies of Adobe Reader have been distributed.

An open file format specification, PDF is available to anyone who wants to develop tools to create, view, or manipulate PDF documents. More than 1,800 vendors now offer PDF-based solutions, ensuring that organizations that adopt the PDF standard have a variety of tools with which to leverage the format and customize document processes. Government and commercial organizations worldwide have already adopted PDF to streamline document management, increase productivity, and reduce the need for paper documents and archives. To learn more about the many benefits PDF can offer, visit www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/adobepdf.html for more information, including the published specifications.

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PDF and XML: The Intelligent Document

PDF has evolved into the most effective container for data that needs to be exchanged among applications and users. Leveraging the ubiquitous Adobe Reader, enterprises can deploy static electronic documents and Intelligent Documents both internally and outside the firewall. Providing a familiar look and feel that makes electronic documents as easy to use as paper, PDF can be combined with XML schemas to create an interface that enables people to participate more directly in business processes.

Anyone with Web access can use the Adobe Reader or a Web browser to view and edit information in intelligent forms that act as the front end to enterprise applications. Organizations can work with customers and partners in the way those constituents prefer - using desktops or laptops (running Microsoft® ® Windows®, UNIX, Linux, or Mac OS), PDAs, or mobile phones - through the universal Adobe Reader client and through Adobe's support for browsers (HTML and JavaScript™).

Intelligent forms and documents have the same look and feel as static forms and documents, but can also include important enterprise data and business logic to allow for pre-population (pre-filled information such as customer names or account numbers) and automatic calculations (such as mortgage interest rates). What makes these forms intelligent is the ability to define business logic within the form. An example of this kind of business logic might be, "If this person doesn't review this form within two days, route it to the next person on the review list." By using business logic within the form, an enterprise can accelerate business transactions and reduce delays in getting products to market.

Pre-populated forms can provide a front-end interface for managing business processes with custom Web applications, and for interacting with Web services. Forms can be integrated with enterprise systems through Web services so that data-entry events trigger an associated workflow. Forms can also be used in WebSphere Portal deployments so that form filling and submission can be included as features on a portal page.

In addition, PDF documents can be routed to a list of people, retaining the embedded rights so that the next recipient has the same functionality enabled. As information is added or updated, the document serves as a vehicle for returning the information to the enterprise applications, helping the enterprise avoid costly and error-prone manual data entry.

The combination of XML and PDF offers the best features of both. XML offers powerful data and business logic functionality and is ideal for exchanging core data among diverse enterprise systems and devices. In addition, the rich presentation and document control capabilities delivered by PDF put a user-friendly face on enterprise data. The combination of PDF and XML helps enterprise architects build modular components and create incremental solutions quickly and easily. These advantages enhance communications and help automate and accelerate the flow of business-critical information, while maximizing investments in existing technology and systems.

Another important advantage of combining XML and PDF is the ability to map different data formats from different applications to one unified form. For example, if a transaction involves three different systems for credit checks, order fulfillment, and order shipping, it is impractical to make users fill out three separate forms just to accommodate the system architecture. The Intelligent Document Platform makes it possible to integrate information from different form fields into different XML documents for back-end systems. You can also create different forms using the same data format. This makes it convenient for enterprises to present information differently, or in different forms, or in a personalized form that shows only the information relevant to the user. Enterprise architects no longer need to break apart an official XML schema into special definitions just to deploy different forms.

The PDF and XML architectures cleanly separate the form template and form data, as shown in Figure 1. They combine the separate template and data at run time to dynamically build the form representation with which the user interacts.

You can save Intelligent Documents in PDF or in an XML Data Package (XDP) to be processed as XML. An XDP file is simply an XML file that packages a PDF file in XML, along with XML form and template data. Since an XDP file is an XML file, standard XML tools, system interfaces, and Web services can work with it, making the XML data directly accessible.

The Adobe XML architecture also supports user data in an arbitrary XML format. For example, if your organization uses a standard schema for purchase orders, account information, or project schedules, your PDF forms can directly use XML data structured according to this schema. Figure 2 shows the advantage of this approach. For example, once you have a schema for a purchase order, interface designers can create form layouts for human interactions while application developers can use the same schema to build Web services interfaces for back-end system integration.

For example, users can download the form, fill it out, and submit it via e-mail, or alternatively, click a Submit button on the form to send the data to a Web services interface via a Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) message. For an organization that has implemented enterprise resource planning (ERP), the application can directly connect to the service interface, generate the appropriate XML data, and invoke the service. The end result is the same: the order processing system gets a completed XML document that conforms to the desired schema. When you need to accommodate human interaction in an automated process, this approach reduces the cost of requirements analysis, interface development, and back-end integration.

People can participate in processes while they are offline, because XML data travels within the PDF document. PDF files include a variety of security options - from access restrictions to electronic signatures - that help protect sensitive company information. In addition, the XML data can be locked by the PDF container to create documents of record and to comply with standards for electronic document archiving (as recently mandated by the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration). The association of XML data to its display format is critical to maintaining an audit trail, fighting fraud, and protecting the abuse of raw data stored in databases, which is especially critical in highly regulated industries.

Components of the Intelligent Document Solution

The quality of information in core business systems improves when the systems receive data directly from customers via Intelligent Documents. Manual workarounds are reduced or eliminated because Intelligent Documents are connected to back-office applications. The ability to embed business logic into documents empowers enterprises to control security at the document level. As a result, an Intelligent Document can be the record of a transaction from the time it is initiated until it is archived.

Enterprises can deploy the Adobe LiveCycle™ line of J2EE-based enterprise servers and design tools to run the Adobe Intelligent Document Platform as part of its J2EE architecture. The LiveCycle products used in the joint Adobe and IBM solution are the following:

• Adobe LiveCycle Designer: Enables users to quickly create and maintain form templates, define a form's business logic, make changes, and preview forms before they are deployed.
• Adobe LiveCycle Form Manager: Provides a central repository for administrators to manage form publication and for end users to access enterprise forms via a Web-based portal.
• Adobe LiveCycle Forms: Enables organizations to intelligently capture information regardless of the user environment - online or offline, internal or external - using PDF or HTML to streamline form-driven business processes through automation.
• Adobe LiveCycle Reader Extensions: Enables organizations to activate previously hidden functionality within the free, ubiquitous Adobe Reader. Any end user can interact with multiple applications via Intelligent Documents, thus extending business processes beyond the enterprise.
• Adobe LiveCycle Document Security: Provides all of the digital signature and encryption capabilities of Adobe Acrobat 6.0 in a server environment.
• Adobe LiveCycle Policy Server: Client/server enterprise document control solution that solves the challenges of managing the use of and access to electronic documents.
• Adobe LiveCycle Barcoded Forms: Enables Adobe PDF forms to be enhanced with dynamic 2D barcodes.

The Adobe Intelligent Document Platform provides Adobe Document Services - the underlying technologies that offer the ability to manage the creation and integration of intelligent documents. Adobe Document Services manage the complete document lifecycle, unlocking the power and extending the reach of data - by leveraging native XML and PDF to integrate documents into the IT environment - without sacrificing document integrity or open standards.

Adobe Document Services includes the following services (see Figure 3):

• Document generation: for dynamically generating high-quality, intelligent documents from core enterprise applications and merging multiple file formats and XML data with dynamic templates, in order to generate intelligent documents in batch or real-time.
• Collaboration: for multiple people working together to create, review, and mark up documents and exchange business-critical information more securely and efficiently.
• Process management: for automating document-based workflows and accelerating access to business-critical information. Enterprises can automate data capture and streamline business processes inside and outside core systems.
• Document control and security: for managing access to business-critical information and certifying document authenticity with digital signatures.

The IBM WebSphere software platform provides the ideal foundation for the Adobe Intelligent Document Platform. WebSphere provides the infrastructure to connect people, core systems, and the information in those systems. Adobe Intelligent Documents enable more people to interact with business information and processes.

Extending the Intelligent Document Solution to J2EE and WebSphere

The joint solution provided by Adobe and IBM includes Adobe Document Services, delivered by Adobe LiveCycle modules optimized for the IBM WebSphere software platform and WebSphere Application Server, and easy-to-use tools and resources to help WebSphere users develop and deploy forms-based processes as an integrated part of their Web application and business integration infrastructures.

Compatible with J2EE and WebSphere Studio Application Developer, the solution offers a single development environment - versus multiple islands of tools - to lower development costs and increase developer productivity. The optimizations make it possible for enterprises to maximize the performance, features, and availability of Adobe Document Services by using the highly reliable and scalable WebSphere Application Server to host them.

IBM and Adobe have integrated Adobe Document Services with IBM DB2® Content Manager, IBM WebSphere Business Integrator, IBM WebSphere Portal, and IBM middleware (see Figure 4) to provide an intelligent and integrated form development, deployment, and process management solution. The IBM and Adobe solution offers a single, unified system to manage all types of business content and documents - including forms - and related business processes. With process-level integration, enterprises can exchange data across applications to fulfill a business process.

Adobe Document Services running on WebSphere enable the enterprise to use Intelligent Documents with business processes to integrate a variety of disparate business systems so that information in forms can be efficiently shared and reused.

WebSphere offers integrated support for key Web services open standards, such as SOAP, Universal Description, Discovery and Integration (UDDI), and Web Services Description Language (WSDL), making it a leading production-ready Web application server for the deployment of enterprise Web services solutions. Adobe Document Services supports these open standards and the powerful interoperability between Web Services and J2EE applications offered by WebSphere, which can enable key solution offerings for collaboration, B2B, portal serving, content management, commerce, and pervasive computing.

WebSphere also offers superior connectivity with the J2EE Connector Architecture (JCA). Enterprises can use this connectivity with Adobe Document Services to integrate Intelligent Documents with SAP, PeopleSoft, Oracle ERP Financials, J.D. Edwards, IBM CICS®, IBM IMS™, and IBM Host On-Demand applications, through a corresponding set of IBM adapters.

In addition to optimizing Document Services for WebSphere, Adobe and IBM have also integrated Adobe LiveCycle Designer with WebSphere Studio, providing a single, familiar development environment for integrating documents and mission-critical business processes. WebSphere Studio provides development tools for building and deploying specialized application environments (such as portals) and custom Web applications that include the ability to allow users to access, fill out, and submit forms over the Web. WebSphere Studio accelerates J2EE development with templates, wizards, and a comprehensive visual XML development environment for building document type definitions (DTDs), XML schemas, XML, and Extensible Style Language (XSL) files. It also supports integration of relational data and XML.

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Two Steps to Integrate Documents with Processes

Adobe Document Services can expedite the delivery and use of Intelligent Documents in traditional forms-based processes such as loan applications for banking customers, or claims processing for insurance companies.

Designing Forms to Use as Intelligent Documents

Enterprises use Adobe LiveCycle Designer to design and convert forms into PDF-based Intelligent Documents that can be integrated with business processes using WebSphere Studio. Organizations that custom-design application front ends no longer need to perform costly Java development to design forms; instead, they can focus efforts on higher-value tasks. You can use LiveCycle Designer to combine XML schema and the Adobe PDF presentation layer into an XML Data Package (XDP), which creates intelligent, actionable forms.

Adobe provides a plug-in for WebSphere Studio to enable recognition of Adobe forms as valid components within a Java development project. Java developers can automatically launch LiveCycle Designer to edit forms in context, as shown in Figure 5. Developers can include URL or JSP references to forms in custom Web applications, using the form as a medium for people to enter information and interact with the application.

Form designers can also use Adobe LiveCycle Reader Extensions to add tokens to PDF forms that, when downloaded over the Web, automatically turn on advanced features within Adobe Reader, such as digital signatures and offline filling. These features are assigned to that particular document only. They can include the ability to:

• Save the file locally
• Fill out forms and retain a personal electronic copy
• Share documents with others to review and add comments using intuitive mark-up tools like electronic sticky notes, highlights, and text strikethrough
• Sign, certify, and authenticate documents by applying digital signatures, using industry-standard technologies
• Submit the document electronically

Once the template design is complete and all visual and interactive elements have been added, the Intelligent Document is ready for deployment as either a downloadable PDF file that can be filled in offline with Adobe Reader, or an HTML page readable in any browser.

Generating Intelligent Documents Integrated with Processes

After creating intelligent forms with Adobe LiveCycle Designer, an enterprise can easily deploy those forms to custom Web applications and portal environments using IBM WebSphere Studio Application Developer.

Adobe technologies run as services on the application server. Depending on the steps required to process a request, Adobe LiveCycle Forms uses different services. The services provide the functionality for client-side and server-side execution of documents that are rendered into PDF or HTML. Using the configuration and administration tools, administrators and developers can configure and administer the services.

When end users request a document (or click a button or image on a form), the request initiates a series of specific processes and interactions among the web application, Adobe LiveCycle Forms, and the browser. After receiving the document, end users can interact with it online. After end users are finished with the document, they submit the information captured.

At run time, Adobe Document Services, running on WebSphere Application Server, merge multiple file formats and XML data with templates to generate Intelligent Documents. For example, the Java code in Figure 6 (RenderForm.java) renders a PDF form using XML data.

				
				import com.adobe.formServer.ejb.*;
import com.adobe.formServer.interfaces.IOutputContext;

import java.io.*;
import java.util.*;
import javax.naming.*;
import javax.rmi.*;

public class RenderForm {
 public static void main( String[] args ) throws Exception {
	Hashtable jndiEnvironment = new Hashtable();
	jndiEnvironment.put( Context.INITIAL_CONTEXT_FACTORY, 
	   "com.sun.jndi.cosnaming.CNCtxFactory" );
	jndiEnvironment.put( Context.PROVIDER_URL, 
	   "iiop://localhost:2809" );
	Context ctx = new InitialContext( jndiEnvironment );

	IFormServerHome fsHome = 
	   (IFormServerHome) PortableRemoteObject.narrow(
		ctx.lookup( 
		  "cell/nodes/og-p650/servers/server1/ejb/com/adobe/formServer/FormServer" ),
		IFormServerHome.class
	);

	IFormServer fs = fsHome.create();
	IOutputContext oc = fs.renderForm(
		new File( "Form.xdp" ).toURI().getPath(),
		"PDFForm",
		new String( "b<NumberField>50</NumberField>
				<StringField>Fifty</StringField>
			</DataIsland>" ).getBytes(),
		"", // options unused
		"", // user agent unused
		", // application root unused
		", // target URL unused
		"file://localhost/",
		" // base URL unused
	);

	// Save the rendered form to the specified target.

	System.out.write( oc.getOutputContent());
	System.out.close();
   }
}

Enterprises can choose different ways to deploy Intelligent Documents for filling out forms and interacting with processes. Developers can use forms created in LiveCycle Designer with Web services developed in WebSphere Studio to link form-filling activities with back-end transactions (such as data lookups). Portal applications developed with WebSphere Portal, and custom applications built with WebSphere Studio, can link to forms that are either Web pages that are filled in online or downloadable PDF files that can be filled in offline with Adobe Reader.

By combining system-level security capabilities in WebSphere with document-level security capabilities from Adobe, organizations can extend the protection of confidential or sensitive information outside the protected network. The solution extends an enterprise's internal authentication and authorization model to provide additional document-level security for information collected from or delivered to users over the Internet.

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Conclusion

With the availability of the Adobe Intelligent Document Platform optimized for IBM WebSphere, documents are integrated with the very IT infrastructure and enterprise applications that streamline and automate business processes. This common technology platform allows organizations to achieve improved efficiency, better communications with constituents, and more responsiveness. Integration between components of the Adobe Intelligent Document Platform and WebSphere help IBM customers extend the value of their IBM middleware investments.

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Download

Description	Name	Size	Download method
sample form	adobesample01.zip	5 KB	FTP|HTTP

Information about download methods

Resources

• Visit the Adobe page on IBM developerWorks for trial software, tutorial, and more, or visit http://www.adobe.com/enterprise.
  
  
• If you have any questions, please ask Adobe
  
  

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Table of contents

• Introduction
• Not your father's PDF
• PDF and XML: The Intelligent Document
• Two Steps to Integrate Documents with Processes
• Conclusion
• Download
• Resources
• About the author
• Comments

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