forms server

[lcForm]

My department has the form server which we don't use. What is the complexity of having it set up and run with livecycle forms? Is there any server side scripting required? If yes, what kind of scripting? Do forms need to be redesigned to run on the server?

[Former Community Member]

The use of Form Server is dependant on what you are doing with your forms. Basically Form Server will render your form designs and merge them with data (if required) to create the required output format and deliver it to the client. There are no specific changes that need to be made to the template to have form server render them (they must be saved as XDP files). Form Server needs to be called by another program so there is some server side cding that must be done to use it. Typically a link is provided on a web page and that link calls a server side program which in turn calls Form Server indicating which template and what data to use/ Form server does its thing and returns the output back to the program which in turn passes it on to the client.

Hope that helps

Paul

[lcForm]

The basic idea is to have all forms connected to Enterprise Database. I found out an article about Creating Form Rendering ASP.NET Applications. It talks about Web Server hosting an ASP.net application, J2EE application server hosting Lifecycle ES and XDP forms designed in Lifecycle. Is this the way to go or are there different options for connecting Lifecycle forms to the database?

[Former Community Member]

Can you elaborate more on what you want to do with the databases? Are you merely prepopulating the form with data or are you intending on interacting with the DB through the form?

Paul

[lcForm]

I think we want collect information from the forms and/or submit them to the server for processing.

[Former Community Member]

Then I woudl say Forms is the way to go ....

Paul

[lcForm]

PDF form itself is a single record, but I need to collect all records from different users in the DB and organize it somehow for the requestor. 

[Former Community Member]

So each filled PDF form is written to the DB as a record. When the user is completed filling the form they woudl hit a submit button and you can have the data (in an XML format) posted back to the server. There a program can be called and the record in the DB created (you can use whatever programming language you want for this). Now that the data is in the DB you can use whatever DB reporting tools you want to create the report.

Paul

[lcForm]

Could you give an example of a programming language? I was thinking more about a language that has an API with a lifecycle form, something like an FDF toolkit. I am not sure about using an XML parser. What if I have a 15 page form...  I thought maybe the form server has the API.

[Former Community Member · Accepted solution]

The language will depend on the app server/web server that you are submitting to. People have used ASP, .Net, JSP, Java. PHP, just to name a few. The Form Server has a SOAP connection and an EJB interface so if you use Java the EJB is the way to go....if you use something else then the SOAP interface is the way to go.

Paul