LiveCycle
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
LiveCycle® is a suite of mostly server-based software products from Adobe Systems Incorporated [1] centred around its PDF [2] (Portable Document Format) technology. Current shipping version is 7.2.2
The products can be broadly classified into desktop products and server products.
Contents |
[edit] Desktop Products
Designer [3] - Adobe LiveCycle Designer is a form design tool. It can be used for creating electronic forms based on Adobe's XML [4] specifications.
Workflow Designer - This is a business process modeling tool. It can be used to create digital process management maps that capture physical business workflows. This product is tightly coupled with the Workflow (server) product and can only be used along with it.
[edit] Server Products
The majority of these products are J2EE (Java 2 Enterprise Edition) products which require a J2EE application server (AS) to run. Currently supported J2EE application servers are IBM [5] WebSphere Application Server, BEA Systems [6] WebLogic Application Server and Red Hat [7] JBoss [8] Application Server. Currently supported operating systems include Microsoft Windows Server 2000 [9] and 2003 [10], IBM AIX [11] 5.2 and 5.3, Sun Microsystems Solaris [12] 8 and 9, Red Hat Enterprise Linux [13] 2.1 and 3.0, Novell SuSE Enterprise Linux [14] 9.0.
These products are enterprise software-class products capable of being deployed on a large scale. They can be deployed either individually or integrated with other products in the suite. They are full-fledged J2EE applications requiring the services of the Web Container, the EJB Container as well as both point-to-point and publish-subscribe Java Message Service (JMS) messaging. Most have programmable APIs (Application Programming Interface).
[edit] PDF Form Products
Barcoded Forms [15] - this is a non-J2EE product. This technology is useful when users have to send back filled out forms in paper format. During the design of a form, a PDF417 2-Dimension Barcode is embedded in a certain part of the form. When a user fills out the form electronically, the entered data in encoded in the 2D barcode. When the filled out form is printed on paper, the 2D barcode will contain all of the data entered in the form. At the processing facility, the printed forms are scanned and processed through the Adobe® LiveCycle® Barcoded Forms server to retrieve the data. This avoids re-keying of the data which consumes time, effort and money, and is also highly error-prone.
Forms [16] - formerly called 'Form Server', this product lets you convert Adobe's XDP [17] (XML Data Package) electronic form templates to other formats like HTML, PDF etc. It can merge external data into the fields inside the form as well as extract data from the fields inside the form.
Form Manager [18] - lets you organize your electronic forms into intuitive hierarchies. It also serves as a user interface for the LiveCycle® Workflow product.
[edit] PDF Creation Products
PDF Generator [19] - formerly called Acrobat Elements Server, this product lets you create documents in the PDF format from other native document formats such as Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Visio, Microsoft PowerPoint, Corel WordPerfect, AutoCAD etc.
[edit] PDF Assembly Products
Assembler [20] - lets you assemble multiple PDF documents.
[edit] PDF Process Management Products
Workflow [21] - After the organization's document processes have been mapped into electronic workflow processes using LiveCycle® Workflow Designer, this product executes them.
[edit] PDF Security Products
Document Security [22] - lets you apply security to PDF documents.
Policy Server [23] - This Digital Rights Management product lets you apply security policies to PDF documents as well as other document formats. A "policy" is essentially multiple document security controls combined into a single entity. The product also offers audit trails for policy-applied documents.
Reader Extensions [24] - lets you add additional information to a PDF document so that when users open that PDF document in the free Adobe® Reader® [25], certain functionality which is usually available only in the full Adobe Acrobat®, becomes available to them. This includes, among other things, the ability to submit a form electronically rather than print it out and send it back by mail.
[edit] Competing Products and Technologies
Adlib Software's Express Server [26] is a server-based competitor. Microsoft InfoPath [27] is a competing product. So is IBM Workplace Forms [28]. Also, World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) [29] XForms [30].
