help on business case scenario

[Former Community Member]

Hi All,



Being a newbie in Adobe LiveCycle Designer, I'd like to ask

advice on autmation the following business case:



I'm thinking about usage PDF forms on Internet web-site, that

should collect data from users. The following typical scenario

currently is supposed.



1. The user browses forms drirectory and selects the form to fill-in

2. The form (PDF) is opened in web-browser, using latest Adobe Arcrobat

Reader plug-in

3. The user fills-in data and clicks on submit button

4. Acrobat Reader performs data validation and submits data to server

(servlet/jsp). I've not yet decided about the format- xml, http-post

.. or may be a call to web-service.

Here we need to:

a. assign unique ID for this submission in database

b. somehow avoid the duplicate submit (if user click on browser's "back" button and then click on it again)



5. Submitted data are stored in database with unique ID

6. Later, the use wants to see his/her personal history of submitted

forms. The user browses submissions list, selects a form. The form

is opened in browser as PDF, filled automatically with data from

database, but should't allow the user to submit it again, i.e opened

as read-only.



I understand, that LifeCycle ES server components can do this (and even

more :-) ), but my challenge is to stick ONLY with LifeCycle Designer without any additional server components (price/integration issues).

Any ideas and pointers will be highly appreciated.



Thank you in advance,

/Alex

[Former Community Member]

Here are a few thoughts..



I would submit this via a web service, and return a confirmation to the form (probably just a 1 or 0 value) to determine if the record was inserted correctly.



You can use whatever auto-number functionality your DB has (if it's Oracle, the nextval functionality) to generate the unique ID. If you want, you could return the ID to the form as the confirmation.



You won't be able to completely eliminate the possibility of dual submissions, because you never know what users will end up trying, but you can diminish the chance. When a "success" confirmation is returned, hide the submit button. Depending on the user's and the form's cache settings, clicking back and forward to return to the form should maintain this state.



Make sure you Reader Extend this form or users won't be able to fill it out using Reader.



You may be able to do this without a LiveCycle workflow, but it may just be easier to do so.



If you have any questions, feel free to email me. I hope some of this feedback helped. Thanks!



Ryan D. Lunka

Cardinal Solutions Group

rlunka@cardinalsolutions.com