integration with enterprise database systems
DESCRIPTION
Integration with Enterprise Database Systems. Tim Sullivan activePDF, Inc. 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. The Apparel Manufacturer. The Problem. - PowerPoint PPT PresentationTRANSCRIPT
Integration with Enterprise Integration with Enterprise Database SystemsDatabase Systems
Tim Sullivan
activePDF, Inc.
The ExamplesThe 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
The Apparel ManufacturerThe Apparel Manufacturer
The ProblemThe Problem
2,500 page catalog
Thousands of resellers
100 “area” managers
Need to target sales
No digital assets
Reduce costs in delivery of materials
How they did it manuallyHow 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
What they wanted to doWhat 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
How they did itHow 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
How they did it (pt 2)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)
The Business Card CompanyThe Business Card Company
The ProblemThe 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
How they did it manuallyHow 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 blanksGenerate PostScriptSend to the printer for output
What they wanted to doWhat they wanted to do
Permit versioning of logos and other digital assets
Let customer enter employee information via web page
Generate proof PDFAfter acceptance, send to printer in PDF
format
How they did itHow they did it
Implemented Microsoft Visual SourceSafe as versioning tool
Rendered digital assets as EPS filesWrote web page to accept employee inputWrote PostScript code to select font and
print employee informationInjected PostScript code to embed EPS
assets (via “Run” command)
How they did it (pt 2)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
The Movie StudioThe Movie Studio
The ProblemThe 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
How they did it manuallyHow 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
What they wanted to doWhat they wanted to do
Automatically run the HTML report in the morning
Convert to PDFEmail to all production officesPermit searching and HTML report
generation on a subset of the data (ad-hoc reporting)
How they did itHow 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
The Ticket SellerThe Ticket Seller
The ProblemThe 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
How they did it manuallyHow 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
What they wanted to doWhat they wanted to do
Let customer select and purchase tickets online
Generate tickets as a PDFDownload data only to venueLet venue scan ticket (one scan, one ticket)
How they did itHow 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