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ODF Toolkit: Case Studies

Case Study: Semi-Automatic Document Creation

  • Description: Interactive creation of text documents in a client-server environment, based on templates and text document fragments. Both, templates and document fragments are ODF documents. The created documents are printed. The project is realized by a joint project with customer and a solution provider.

  • Environment: J2EE-Server

  • Programming Language: Java

  • Requested Functionality:

    • Document composition from document fragments according to a customer specific rule-sets.

      • The solution provider is responsible for the composition of the documents itself.

      • The customer os responsible for the implementation of the rule-set.

    • Merging of data into text fields.

    • Printing.

    • Editing of OpenDocument documents within a browser (or at least without a full OpenOffice.org installation on the client). A restricted feature set for editing was permissible.

  • Solutions:

    • First Proposal

      • OpenOffice.org should be used for all the above tasks with the exception of the last one.

        • Rejected by the customer because OpenOffice.org appears to be to heavy.

    • Second Proposal

      • Java components for composition, merging.

      • OpenOffice.org for printing.

      • Reuse of existing HTML-based AJAX solutions for editing on the browser + Java components for merging of the modified text fragments with the source document.

        • Rejected by the customer because the overall implementation effort we considered to be not reliably calculatable.

    • Third Proposal

      • ODF Toolkit for composition, merging.

      • OpenOffice.org for printing.

      • Reuse of existing HTML-based AJAX solutions for editing on the browser + ODF Toolkit for merging of the modified text fragments with the source document.

        • Accepted by the customer.

Case Study: Collaboration

  • Description: Server based collaboration on text documents with OpenOffice.org as clients. Smallest unit for collaboration is a text section. Labelling of sections (public, confidential, etc.) and server-based creation of documents that contain only those sections that a certain user is permitted to see.

  • Environment: J2EE-Server

  • Programming Language: Java

  • Requested Functionality: Copying of text section between documents.

  • Solutions

    • First Proposal: Use of OpenOffice.org

      • Not acceptable, because required functionality is not available through the API. As a work-around text sections may be copied using the clipboard, but this would not be safe in a server environment.

    • Second Proposal: Implementation of Java components, which work on ODF files

      • Not acceptable, because a deep ODF and XML knowledge is required.

    • Third Proposal: Use of an ODF Toolkit.

      • Accepted

Case Study: ODF Filters for Foreign Products

  • Description: Plug-in for foreign product that provides OpenDocument filters.

  • Environment: Foreign Product

  • Programming Language: C/C++

  • Requested Functionality: OpenOffice.org subset required for document conversion.

  • Solution: ODF Toolkit

Case Study: XHTML-Filter

  • Description: XSLT based XHTML filter.

  • Environment: OpenOffice.org, Browser

  • Programming language: Java interface (called from XSLT)

  • Requested Functionality: Export of images, Locale support

  • Solution: Use ODF Toolkit to support transformation of locale dependent features and for extracting images from an ODF document.

Case Study: Automatic Document Creation

  • Description: Server-based non-interactive document creation.

  • Environment: Customer written business application running on a server.

  • Programming Language: Java

  • Requested Functionality: Create MS Word-Documents from document templates containing text fields and image fields.

  • Solution:

    • Use ODF Toolkit for creating new ODF document from given template.

    • Use ODF Toolkit to fill document's fields.

    • Use Conversion Service (OpenOffice.org, Conversion Server) to create Word-Document from ODF.

Case Study: Automatic Document Creation

  • Description: Non-interactive document creation.

  • Environment: Customer written business application running either locally or on a server.

  • Programming Language: Java

  • Requested Functionality: Create PDF-Documents from document templates containing text fields.

  • Solution:

    • use ODF Toolkit for creating new ODF document from given template

    • use ODF Toolkit to fill document's fields

    • use Conversion Service (OpenOffice.org, Conversion Server) to create PDF-Document from ODF

Case Study: ODF for Workflow Modelling

General setting is the integration of ODF forms documents into information live cycle managements applications. Documents can be regarded as a container that allows users to interact with (business) data. Hence, these scenarios circle around human and computer agents exchanging information through documents.

A client application is a program, that uses the ODF Toolkit to interact with ODF documents. A user is a person who opens the document in a viewing/editing application.

  1. Access to forms and fields structure

    Client application retrieves information about the data structure which is embedded into the document through forms. In case of text-fields or simple forms, this data structure is a simple list of field names and types. In case of XML based forms, this is the XML schema of the XForms instance.

  2. Embedding of system specific information

    Client application embeds additional information into the document. Specific example is a session identifier, which binds a document instance to an instance of a particular work-flow or process in the ILM system.

  3. Read access to form data

    Client retrieves values from filled out forms that were saved along with the document. This includes form fields as well as additional information which was embedded in (2)

  4. Write access to form data

    Client updates values of form fields (or instance data). This is consequently visible to a user subsequently opening the document.

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