Integration with Enterprise Database Systems

1. Integration with Enterprise Database Systems Tim Sullivan activePDF, Inc.

2. The Examples • Real problems we’ve encountered • Solutions use real products • The solution may not be the one they chose • The names have been changed to protect the innocent

3. The Apparel Manufacturer

4. The Problem • 2,500 page catalog • Thousands of resellers • 100 “area” managers • Need to target sales • No digital assets • Reduce costs in delivery of materials

5. How they did it manually • Area manager would look through a copy of the catalog for merchandise to target • Cut the pages and/or pieces out • Paste them onto new pages • Send to printer for reproduction into saddle stitched books • Mail to all resellers in the area

6. What they wanted to do • Let area manager search for merchandise to target • Select via a web page the pieces they needed • Assemble the pieces into a PDF booklet • Add a table of contents with hyperlinks • Email to all resellers

7. How they did it • Scanned all catalog pages into TIFF images and saved into Oracle database as blobs • Wrote web page that permitted searching and selection from the database • Looped through once to retrieve part numbers, descriptions and determined page numbers

8. How they did it (pt 2) • Used PDFlib (www.pdflib.com) to generate a PDF page with hyperlinks to pages • Re-looped through dataset and for each part number, downloaded TIFF as blob and used PDFLib to import into the PDF • Emailed the resulting PDF using ASPMail (free from www.dundas.com)

9. The Business Card Company

10. The Problem • Handled customers with 10,000+ employees • Unable to effectively handle different versions of digital assets • Turnaround time was 2+ weeks • Orders would get lost

11. How they did it manually • Customer would call or fax in an order with the employee’s information • Find the folder with the correct “template” • Fill in the blanks • Generate PostScript • Send to the printer for output

12. What they wanted to do • Permit versioning of logos and other digital assets • Let customer enter employee information via web page • Generate proof PDF • After acceptance, send to printer in PDF format

13. How they did it • Implemented Microsoft Visual SourceSafe as versioning tool • Rendered digital assets as EPS files • Wrote web page to accept employee input • Wrote PostScript code to select font and print employee information • Injected PostScript code to embed EPS assets (via “Run” command)

14. How they did it (pt 2) • Called JAWS PS to PDF Library to convert PostScript to PDF (www.jawspdf.com) • When PDF was completed (checked via exclusive file access), sent to customer via email • When customer accepts via web page, emailed PDF to printer • Saved PDF onto file system for billing and audit purposes

15. The Movie Studio

16. The Problem • Many independent production companies on the lot • Centralized scheduling of studio facilities • Production companies need all information for scheduling on a daily basis to adjust (and fight for) their schedules • Production assistants do not want to run reports

17. How they did it manually • Written as HTML report using Active Server Pages • Manually ran report at 3AM using Internet Explorer • Printed 1,000 page report to the high speed printer • Sent for reproduction and reproduced as many copies as needed • Distributed manually to each production office

18. What they wanted to do • Automatically run the HTML report in the morning • Convert to PDF • Email to all production offices • Permit searching and HTML report generation on a subset of the data (ad-hoc reporting)

19. How they did it • Added page break tags to the HTML generation code • Added front end interface for report generation • Used activePDF WebGrabber (www.activepdf.com) to render HTML to PDF • WebGrabber automatically emailed to distribution list • End user Ctrl-F to find their production company and reviewed schedule

20. The Ticket Seller

21. The Problem • Millions of tickets sold annually • Thousands of venues to print tickets for will call • Non will-call tickets need to be mailed (and could get lost) • Credit card companies require pickup to be same person that purchased tickets

22. How they did it manually • If venue supports it, tickets and receipts printed locally after data transmitted • If not, tickets and receipts must be printed remotely and then delivered • Requires special ticket “printers” and data lines • Have customer produce identification to match against ticket

23. What they wanted to do • Let customer select and purchase tickets online • Generate tickets as a PDF • Download data only to venue • Let venue scan ticket (one scan, one ticket)

24. How they did it • Let customer select and purchase ticket online as usual • Use Adobe PDF Library to dynamically generate a “ticket” with a unique barcode • Customer prints out PDF using free Acrobat Reader • Data only is sent to venues that support technology • Any customer holding the ticket is permitted entrance upon scan by venue personnel