Creating interactive reports in PDF

Question

I want to create reports that can be drilled down by the readers - but the reports have to be PDF. I have two options:

1. Link from the PDF to an online report tool
2. Make the reports themselves interactive

I like #2...

I believe I can do this with Adobe AIR (Flex, Flash + Adobe Reader 9 or higher).

There are tools that can create PDF documents programatically (AIR?, AlivePDF)

There are frameworks in Adboe that are ideal for reports and charts (Flex)

And PDF documents can contain flash content (Adobe Reader 9+)

My questions are:

1. If I have an interactive Flash component in a PDF document and I go to print, what will print? Will the current view of he Flash print?

2. If I want to drill down, all the data has to be in the PDF document (it has to be stand alone). This is fine... but how to do I put the data in the PDF programatically? Is this done with Flex and AlivePDF?

3. I saw an online sample of an interactive charting report in a PDF document, but now I can't find it. :( I would love to find something again if you know of one.

I feel that I may have all the pieces, but not understanding correctly how they all go together. Any ideas?

Answer 1

Answer to question 3: Currently AlivePDF does not allow you to embed Flash content into a generated PDF. The generated PDFs can include text, images, simple graphics, and certain non-visual features such as bookmarks.

Answer 2

we developed interactive content reports for PDF/flashpaper/etc using flex as a front-end but handle the actual report creation server-side using coldfusion's cfdocument/cfpdf (or Itext if we really need insane levels of placement/control/etc.). basically the user chooses the content & the cf app on the backend lays it out & sends back the report.

Answer 3

PDF's have JavaScript as a native control language now. With it, you can embed "links" that jump to other pages, etc.

Theoretically, you can call web services from within a PDF using JS and process the responses, perhaps even dynamically filling page areas.

BUT

PDF's are good for providing a document that looks and prints the same everywhere. They are also good for fill-in forms. They are NOT built for "drill-down" on the client side. Can you check the goals of the project to see why they want dynamic PDF's ? If they want portability (i.e. without a web connection), perhaps you can give them what they want with an AIR application and an XML file.

Cheers