CLIENT-SERVER ARCHITECTURE

UnForm utilizes a client-server architecture, where the UnForm processing of documents can occur on a different machine from the application.  The resulting enhanced document can be printed, emailed, sent to a fax gateway, or stored at the server, or can be returned to the client machine for printing or storage from its perspective.  One important benefit of using a client-server model is that the application process that is sending jobs to UnForm via the client software need not wait for the job to finish if the server will be handling the output.  This provides better performance to the application user, particularly for large or complex jobs that take time for UnForm to process.

The UnForm server can run on either UNIX or Windows systems.  The server provides the UnForm processing logic and a listener, which handles job requests from clients located on the network.

The UnForm clients can be installed anywhere on the network, on Windows or UNIX systems.  On Windows, the client is a native Windows executable.  On UNIX, the client is a Perl program, so UNIX systems require Perl level 5.005 or above.  Clients perform the application interface work, taking input from the application, submitting it to the server, and in many cases, returning the result back to the client for processing.

There is nothing to prevent the same machine from acting as both client and server, and in fact, the server installation automatically installs a client on that machine.  Submitting a job to 'localhost' when the client and server run on the same machine can improve performance, as job data need not be transferred over the network.

For complete information about how to operate the client and server programs, read the Command Line Options chapter.  In general, on Windows the server is operated from the Server Manager option or as a Windows service, and on UNIX the server is operated like this:

 uf90d start

 uf90d stop

The client supports an extensive set of options.  Some simple examples:

 cat sample1.txt | uf90c –f simple.rul | lp –dhp –oraw

 uf90c –i sample1.txt –f simple.rul –o ">lp –dhp –oraw"

 uf90c –i sample1.txt –f simple.rul –p pdf –o client:sample1.pdf

In the first example, uf90c submits the job and returns the result to its spooler.  In the second example, uf90c submits the job and the server prints the result to its spooler.  In the third example, uf90c submits the job requesting PDF output, and returns the result to its file sample1.pdf.