Server-side Word Merge to PDF

[Brian W.]

The project I'm working on allows the end user to answer questions via a website. The results are stored in a database. At the end of the process, the user will want to view/print both the questions and their answers in PDF format from their browser. Our initial thought to solve this was to create a Active Server Page that would do a server-side Word Merge, save the output to PDF, then serve up that PDF back to the browser. Our operations folks say that running Word on a server is not a good idea (performance, security, threading, etc...). So my question is how can I generate a professional looking large document (complete with page numbering and all formatting) in a secure format (PDF) back to the user's browser?

 

[Cindy M -WordMVP-]

Hi =?Utf-8?B?QnJpYW4gVy4=?=,

This is not something I've ever tried, but...

I'd say, generate it as XML for PDF? I think there's an XML for PDF files.

The project I'm working on allows the end user to answer questions via a website. The

results are stored in a database. At the end of the process, the user will want to
view/print both the questions and their answers in PDF format from their browser. Our
initial thought to solve this was to create a Active Server Page that would do a
server-side Word Merge, save the output to PDF, then serve up that PDF back to the
browser. Our operations folks say that running Word on a server is not a good idea
(performance, security, threading, etc...). So my question is how can I generate a
professional looking large document (complete with page numbering and all formatting) in
a secure format (PDF) back to the user's browser?
Cindy Meister
INTER-Solutions, Switzerland
http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister (last update Sep 30 2003)
http://www.word.mvps.org

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