Will PDF Generator provide the needed functionalities?

[Former Community Member]

I'm just starting with LiveCycle and trying to figure out what to use for each scenario.

I'm hoping someone could help me or direct me to places online where I could get help.

Well, I have this client who´s presently creating PDFs manualy from information he gets from a database (basically government expenses info).

He would like to automate this process and generate the PDF documents automaticaly - so I think this takes us to LC PDF Generator ES, right?

He also wants to set up a connection with an Oracle database to draw info from there.

Part of the info is also available from reports generated in some other format.

So I see two ways of getting the info to generate the PDF: one is triggering the process from a watched folder and the other is geting the info directly from the Oracle database (probably through some other  layer).

Once the PDFs are generated, they should be made available on the Internet.

What do I need to crate this application. Will I need other LC modules besides PDF Generator.?

Now, if he wants to add Digital Signatures and access contgrol, will LiveCycle Digital Signatures ES and LiveCycle Rights Management ES do the job?

Thank you for any ideas.

[Hodmi · Accepted solution]

PDF Generator is mostly used to convert existing documents from one format (such as a Word document) into a PDF.

It sounds like you don't have an existing document, you have data in an Oracle DB.  In that case you need to merge the data onto a template to produce your PDF.  That is usually done with either LiveCycle Forms (for interactive PDFs) or LiveCycle Output (for non-interactive, print PDFs).

You would define your template (the layout of the data) using LiveCycle Designer which produces an XDP file.  You then feed the XDP template and the data into Forms or Output and you get a PDF.

[Former Community Member]

Thank you so much, Hodmi!

So, yes, LiveCycle Output is what I need!

I read the info about LC Output and saw the data needs to be fed in XML format. Do I need another layer between Oracle and Output or does Output get the data directly using some connector? (maybe I should move this to the Output forum?).

Thank you!

[Hodmi]

LiveCycle does include a JDBC connector that can access data from an Oracle instance, but that data will need to be formatted into XML at some point. Whether that's easier to do on the Oracle side or on the LiveCycle side will depend on your setup, what kind of data you are accessing and how much data there is.