In this paper we present FormSys, a Web-based system that service-enables form documents. It offers two main services: filling in forms based on Web services’ incoming SOAP messages, and invoking Web services based on filled-in forms. This can be applied to benefit individuals to reduce the number of often repetitive form fields they have to complete manually in many scenarios. It can also help organisations to remove the need for manual data entry by automatically triggering business process implementations based on incoming case data from filled-in forms. While the concept applies to forms of any type of document, our implementation uses Adobe AcroForms due to its universal applicability, availability of a usable API, and end-user appeal. In the demo, we will show the two core functions, namely soap2pdf and pdf2soap, along with use case applications of the services developed from real world scenarios. Essentially, this work demonstrates how PDFs can be used as a channel for ...
Ingo M. Weber, Hye-Young Paik, Boualem Benatallah,