Okay, as a heads up I work for a financial institution and we are converting our legacy "jetforms" to pdf format. I have in my staff for the project, 2 code developers and myself- a form designer. We have currently spent 2 months in trial and error attempting to resolve this problem, please let us know anything you can have. All client-side (internal) machines are running Windows XP and Adobe Reader 7.0.7
The software we use as a financial institution allows our users to export a customer's data file onto their machine which is then renamed to include the member's account number and first and last name for our staff to determine which data file they need more accurately. In legacy jetforms, we have developed a program that pushes the data from the customers file that they select, into the jetform that they want to open and the matching fields in the data file fill in the fields of the jetform. Clean and simple.
Now, i have hit nothing but frustration when attempting to perform the same process with pdfs using a form designed in livecycle designer 7. First, i see no obvious command for opening a pdf and importing a data file using a command line, like pdfmerge or something of the sort in which an xml data file can be specified and a pdf can be specified. I saw something like it using an fdf format and attempted to do this but apparently reader cannot import the data into the pdf that was designed adobe livecycle 7. All i have been seeing is database connections and using javascript inside the form to populate fields based on these database connections, etc. etc. or doing a manual file>import data>etc. which we don't want to have our staff do. We do not have reader extensions enabled, simply because i cannot get an adobe representative to call me and discuss pricing nor see any estimated pricing chart around. I don't know if reader extensions are necessary for this or not but i'm becoming very very frustrated with it.
We don't want a complex server-side data connection binding with dynamic input. No, we just want it where our developers can say "if this data file is selected, and this pdf form is selected run this command" which would be a simple pdfmerge type solution. Is this possible or do i need to stay with jetforms until our software the billion dollar financial institution uses does form building inside its own application? I don't want to fight about who is better, what version to use, etc. I just want the straight up honest truth. If you need to know the pricing that the reader extensions would have to go by, assume there will be 500 client computers that will need to use it.
