Form created with Livecycle Designer with a SQL database - do you need LiveCycle Forms installed?

[star_cookie_que]

Hello,

I'm REALLY hoping someone here can help me, I have spent over four hours on the phone to Adobe in the last 3 days and I'm getting no where what-so-ever. I can't even find out where /how to complain about it! (but thats another story)

Here's my situtation:

I work for a company with approx 140 staff. On one computer, we have Adobe Livecycle Designer ES installed, and we have used that program to create a form which has a link to a SQL database.

The link in this form doesn't work on the other computers which has the basic (free) Adobe Reader. From doing research within these forums

, I have found that the form will not work on other computers unless they have Adobe Livecycle forms installed on their machines.

What I need to know (and what they cannot seem to tell me when I call), is two things:

• Is it correct that in order to use a form created in Livecycle Designer which has a link to a SQL database, that the machine must have LiveCycle forms installed?
• How much does Adobe LiveCycle Forms costs?

PLEASE, if you can answer this question, I would REALLY appriciate it....

Thank you!

[dohanlon]

I presume you are asking if you need Livecycle Forms ES? Forms ES is a component of the livecycle software suite intended as a document service which will be installed on a server within the organisation. A couple of things this document service can do is to render XDP into multiple formats (PDF, html, etc.), execute script server side (for example the database connection) on behalf of the client (reader, etc.), integrate with backend components, etc. So no you do not install this on each client.

For database connections to work, you either have a server with Forms ES installed which can connect on each clients behalf (ie. Client->Forms ES Server->Database), or you have a reader-extended PDF to allow connections to be use in the free basic Reader (i.e. direct calls to the database or using web service calls to your own database components). However, reader-extended pdf would probably require Reader Extensions ES component installed on a server (you once off extend your developed pdf through this and then hand it out to each of the end users). Not sure if the Acrobat Reader extensions will cover this functionality since I have not tried that. I dont think it does. Otherwise you would need full acrobat on each client.

How much database integration is your form actually doing at the moment? read only? Full access? And how many clients do you expect to hit your database? Depending on what you need the form to do, there is always the option to try and build the integration yourself. Do simple http submits from the browser (hosting reader as a plugin) to some component somewhere which in turn hits your database. Wouldnt require additional licensing but alot more development work.

As for cost for the various components, thats a question only Adobe can answer for you since they all sit squarely in the enterprise space and licensing for that is not as simple as off the shelf products.

Maybe someone else has a view on it or has an alternative.

[Niall_O_Donovan]

Hi,

If the user has Reader, then data connections will only work if the form has been Reader Enabled with the server component LC Reader Extensions. Reader enabling the form with Acrobat will not give access to data connections. See here: http://assure.ly/etkFNU and:

LC Forms is a part of the LiveCycle Enterprise Suite and is installed on the server. It is not installed on individual computers.

One potential option would be for the users to submit the forms and for a designated persion (who has Acroabt) to submit the data/form to the database). Depending on the volume of forms this workaround may be either acceptable or unacceptable.

Hope that helps,

Niall