Overview

ITP/OnLine Server is a server based solution for the production of 'interactive' documents. This kind of documents require additional user input during production. During the server based production of the document, the user may be prompted for additional information in the browser. ITP/OnLine Server consists of three main components: ITP/Server, ITP/MDK Repository Server, and ITP/OnLine. These components may be installed on a single server or be distributed over any number of servers.

ITP/Server is the core of the ITP Document Platform. It facilitates all types of document production provided by the ITP portfolio. It may access a wide range of data sources and allows a seamless integration of the document production process in the business processes of the organization. ITP/Server runs as a number of Windows services. These services can satisfy all kinds of (standard or custom) requests. ITP/Server has been designed to be highly scalable. It is accessible through a number of APIs, of which the OnLine API is one. Refer to the ITP/Server Manual for more information on these APIs.

ITP document production is template based. In ITP terminology a template is called a 'model'. The ITP/MDK Repository offers an environment in which these models can be developed in a controlled fashion. It provides role based authorization, revision management, reporting facilities and dependency information. Furthermore dynamical objects, such as Text Blocks and dynamic Forms, can be managed in the ITP/MDK Repository. When producing a document that requires a Text Block or a dynamical Form, ITP/Server will retrieve these at run time from the ITP/MDK Repository Server. Refer to the ITP/MDK Repository Manual for more information on Text Blocks and Forms.

ITP/OnLine is a web based component. It exposes functionality related to the production of interactive documents to browsers. Basically, this means that it operates as an intermediary between ITP/Server and the browsing user. Whereas ITP/Server communicates in terms of XForms XML messages, HTML Forms have to be presented to the user. Likewise, whereas the browser will post data in HTTP messages, ITP/Server requires answers in XML format. ITP/OnLine takes care of the translation between these two components. It is highly configurable and may be customized by adapting all kinds of resources (cascading style sheets, xsl transformations, resource files etc.).

As is shown in chapter A typical run, ITP/OnLine can be used as a stand-alone application, which presents a list of models and supports document production given a selected model. However, in many cases document production will have to be offered to the user as part of another application. Therefore, ITP/OnLine has been designed in such a way that integration into another application is easy.

There are three parties involved in this process:

  1. The integrating application, which can be anything from a simple client(-server) application to a complete portal.
  2. The end user.
  3. ITP/OnLine Server.

ITP/OnLine Server offers different interfaces to both of the other parties:

  1. A server-to-server interface to allow the integrating application to prepare a model run, which is a run in which a single interactive document is produced. Preparation of a model run involves a set of parameters and (optionally) one or more (data) files. A model run will be uniquely identified by a session identifier.
  2. An HTTP interface to allow the end user to produce a document given such a session identifier. The user will be guided through a wizard-like sequence of HTML forms.
  3. A server-to-server interface to allow the integrating application to access the results of a model run e.g., the produced document and some meta data about the model run.

If the definition of the model run is simple, it can also be passed as part of the HTTP interface. In most relevant cases, though, server-to-server preparation of model runs is to be preferred.

Refer to chapter Integration for more details on integration of ITP/OnLine Server in another application.

ITP/OnLine comes in two flavors; an ASP.NET implementation that runs on Microsoft Internet Information Server, and a J2EE implementation that runs on J2EE-based web servers, such as WebSphere, Sun Application Server and JBoss.