Server Side?

Form Data Handling is a very big topic. Acrobat provides two ways to get data out of the form and back to the organization that published the form, email and submit to a server script. It doesn't matter which form technology you are using, data submission is exactly the same in both cases. The one difference being that LiveCycle forms have the option of submitting the data in XDP format and that AcroForms can submit data in FDF.

There are articles on this site that explain the options for dealing with submitting data by email. Just do a search in the Tutorials for "Submit".

Server side is more complicated. Acrobat submits data to an URL as an HTTP post. All the server script gets from acrobat is the submitted data. What it does with data is up to the script, but Acrobat expects to get a response back that is not HTML. The most common kind of response is to sent data back, which then populates the fields on the form. The data transfer is two way and you can use this in either direction to your own advantage.

Of course the LiveCycle ES servers are setup for handling this kind of data transaction. Look up the Form Server. There are also 3rd party services like www.formrouter.com that will take care of the data collection thing for you.

But if you want to write your own server script there are a lot of options. You can write in any CGI/Server scripting language you want, perl, php, ASPX, etc. Adobe's ColdFusion has built in features for handling data submissions from Acrobat so you get a big advantage using it.

Thom Parker
The source for PDF Scripting Info
[url=http://www.pdfScripting.com]pdfscripting.com[/url]

The Acrobat JavaScript Reference, Use it Early and Often
[url=http://www.adobe.com/devnet/acrobat/javascript.php]http://www.adobe.com/devnet/acrobat/javascript.php[/url]

Then most important JavaScript Development tool in Acrobat
[url=http://www.pdfscripting.com/public/34.cfm#JSIntro][b]The Console Window (Video tutorial)[/b][/url]
[url=http://www.acrobatusers.com/tutorials/2006/javascript_console][b]The Console Window(article)[/b][/url]

I spoken to a rep. from Abode and they said that I would have to buy Adobe LiveCycle Forms ES2 and then use the LiveCycle ES2 Modules: Forums to download all the information I want to in to a database. The problem I come across is that I have to buy all of the "extras" just to get what I want it to do and the price is like 5 digits long. So I been thinking what are my options I can go for.
1. Write my own script for it to work.
2. Use a 3rd party services
That really my only options I can think of, so I wounder I thought I post something here to get other ideas on this small issue I'm having.

P.S. "Adobe's ColdFusion has built in features for handling data submissions from Acrobat so you get a big advantage using it." Does ColdFusion take the XML data in to a database from LiveCycle form?

Cold Fusion is a server side scripting technology very much like Java, PHP or ASP.NET. The big difference is that since it's made by Adobe it supporst all kinds of cool PDF features. Like handling data from LiveCycle forms. But LC is only in ColdFusion 9, the lastest version. The specialized PDF stuff is only important if you are handling whole PDF files. Otherwise it's just XML data and all server technologies have XML parsing APIs.

If you are just collecting data then forget about the LC servers. For 1/4 the price of a server (or less) you could pay a developer to build you a super server side application to do exactly what you want. And for an even smaller price you could get a service to do the data handling with no effort on your side. This isn't rocket science.

Thom Parker
The source for PDF Scripting Info
[url=http://www.pdfScripting.com]pdfscripting.com[/url]

The Acrobat JavaScript Reference, Use it Early and Often
[url=http://www.adobe.com/devnet/acrobat/javascript.php]http://www.adobe.com/devnet/acrobat/javascript.php[/url]

Then most important JavaScript Development tool in Acrobat
[url=http://www.pdfscripting.com/public/34.cfm#JSIntro][b]The Console Window (Video tutorial)[/b][/url]
[url=http://www.acrobatusers.com/tutorials/2006/javascript_console][b]The Console Window(article)[/b][/url]

It may not be rocket science but learning it all is something different. Thanks for your quick reply.