Currently I am working on a customer project regarding the usage of SAP document builder. Document builder is an ABAP webdynpro application which could allow you to main template part with various document type ( html, txt, pdf, docx etc ) into a final document with again various document type. You can find more information of it via SCN wiki here.
You can play with it by starting WebDynpro application /IPRO/WD_DOCB. In preview tab there are several output types. 1 means the default docx format and 11 means PDF format ( via LiveCycle ES).
By default only docx output is supported by SAP, the PDF output is just provided via consulting note “1154999 – Using Adobe/LiveCycle ES to Render Docb Document to PDF“. As the PDF output is fundamental for customer, I have to make it work. Unfortunately the consulting note itself just contains the common development steps like how to create ABAP consumer proxy class, how to maintain logical point and RFC destination, but not for Adobe Livecycle Server configuration and deployment etc. If you are interested with this topic, please continue to read.
Although this blog is talking about document builder but actually the idea could be used generically in other case: as long as you have a binary content of a word document, you can consume Adobe LC ES to convert it to PDF in your application.
You might ask that you can google “PDF conversion” and there are plenty of open source solutions and free web services to do the job. However, the customer I am working for is the Top one in its area in China with government background. Take security into consideration, can you imagine they can accept their highly confidential document is sent to a public server which is not deployed within their landscape? You can also googled many undocumented command usage regarding Acrobat Pro which can silently do several operations like print without UI. I didn’t try that since the undocumented means if I have any issues, I could not get any official support from Adobe.
(1) Of course the Adobe Livecyle ES is not for free. You must buy license from Adobe. This blog is written based on a trial version called “JBoss (window version)”, which you can download freely from Adobe website below.