From a user’s perspective, creating a document involves the following steps:
- Starting an application.
- Entering the data required on the screen and triggering the business process.
- Printing the document.
Design Time Architecture and Tools
Play the video to learn more about design time architecture and tools.
At design time, the following can be created using the corresponding tools:
- In Adobe LiveCycle Designer, create the form layout/design.
- In the Maintain Form Templates app, create the form template metadata.
At runtime, the form data provider retrieves or calculates all the necessary data and passes it to the form template.
Architecture of a Print Scenario
The architecture and sequence of a print scenario is as follows:
The request to generate a specific PDF document comes from SAP S/4HANA output management.
First, the form data provider is called with the query data (such as a material number).
The complete data set for the document will be retrieved (all data of related to that material number).
Next, an internal PDF object that represents the document will be created.
The actual rendering of the PDF must happen on a Java Application Server (Java AS), as this is where SAP Forms service by Adobe is installed.
Adobe Document Services does the actual rendering, but it is called and fed from the PDF object on the ABAP Application Server (ABAP AS). The ABAP AS has a Remote Function Call (RFC) connection to the Java AS.
The resulting PDF document is further processed by SAP S/4HANA output management.
For example, it might be sent to the spool for a printout or mailed.
This course focuses on cloud-based implementation, but the scenario described is also possible for an on-premise system. Additionally, it is possible that the ABAP AS is on-premise and that the Java AS, with Adobe Document Services, is on SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP). In this case, the RFC connection is wrapped in a secure channel that is provided by an SAP Cloud Connector.
For other scenarios that work without SAP S/4HANA, it is possible to use Adobe Document Services on the Java AS without the ABAP AS. Instead, it could be that another arbitrary cloud-based application used from within or even outside of SAP BTP uses Adobe Document Services. In this case, the Adobe Document Services can be called via a REST (Representational State Transfer Protocol) service.