Project Description

The Frederick Seitz Materials Research Laboratory Business Office has a paper order form which faculty, staff, and students complete by hand when they need equipment and software. The goal is to replicate this paper form's functionality over the web, and increase functionality when possible. We present a proof-of-concept and show the original paper form, the web form, and the PDF generated.

• MRL Production: http://webapps.mrl.uiuc.edu/business/
• MRL Testing: http://testing.mrl.uiuc.edu/business/

Amy will discuss:

1. the overall workflow: what tools you need, how long it took
   
2. the perl script that:
   
   1. generates the form
      
   2. generates the XML from the form values
      
   3. calls the transformer and processor that generates the PDF
      
3. installing and configuring the apps
   
4. writing the XSLT for the XML → PDF

Kris will discuss:

• Unix to Win, and Apache to IIS issues
• working with the client, in this case, the MRL Business Office
• other PDF-generating tools he's looked at
• unsatisfactory approaches that led to this project.