Seybold Reports: 'Great Deal of Attention Is Now Being Paid to E-Forms'

Seybold Reports: 'Great deal of ADVERTISEMENT attention is now being paid to e- forms' Author says recent product announcements from Adobe and Microsoft have increased visibility, importance 27 April 2004

By Kurt Foss, Planet PDF Editor

"Electronic forms have long resided in a sleepy corner of the content-management landscape, perched somewhere between scan-and-capture applications and records management," writes Bill Trippe in his Seybold Reports article published earlier this month titled "eForms Matter."

But times are changing, he explains, due in part to recent product announcements from Adobe Systems and Microsoft, and the publication of the XForms recommendation by the World Wide Web Consortium.

"But first," writes Trippe, president of New Millennium Publishing, a Boston-based consulting practice and a keynote speaker during the eForms Summit at the recent Seybold Amsterdam conference, "all the contenders must figure out how to displace today's de facto standard, the vanilla HTML form."

Trippe notes that even though electronic forms "have not stood out as a big business in and of themselves," Adobe has long shown an interest, seeking to establish PDF- based forms as a key feature and capability of its Acrobat solutions. (Trippe says that forms-related features began appearing with Acrobat 4, but in fact, Adobe introduced forms in the previous version.) Citing the company's 2002 acquisition of enterprise- oriented Accelio, he says that "e-forms provide Adobe an opportunity to sell more enterprise platforms such as Adobe Form Server and the Adobe Document Server."

Noting Adobe's revamped Form Designer and the related server solutions, Trippe says "the clear emphasis of these products is not just to give professionals tools for creating forms that use Acrobat as the display format; rather, Adobe is fully embracing XML as the data-transport mechanism for e-forms."

After a similar summaries of Microsoft's InfoPath, Trippe opines that in comparing the two companies' solutions, "Adobe would seem to have the advantage today." He explains that "Acrobat alone seems to give Adobe the ability to offer a more feature- rich and flexible design tool for creating e-forms."

He concludes: "The use of electronic forms is vast, but up until now has been dominated by essentially free technology: HTML forms. Perhaps these new technologies can bring added functionality and improved ease of use to the end user and usher in a new generation of applications that are fueled by greatly improved content and data capture at the front end."

Content Management Suddenly, E-Forms Matter By Bill Trippe As today's organizations seek to eliminate paper while capturing ever-more data, there's a contest to set the standard for electronic-forms technology. Adobe and Microsoft are squaring off, and the W3C spec has its adherents. But first, all the contenders must figure out how to displace today's de facto standard, the vanilla HTML form. Electronic forms have long resided in a sleepy corner of the content-management landscape, perched somewhere between scan-and-capture applications and records management. Indeed, only recently have content-management vendors and analysts broadened the definition of Enterprise Content Management (ECM) to include the comparatively fixed content assets in applications such as records management and forms processing. As a result, the feature set and functionality of electronic forms have never been high on end users' lists for content-management solutions. This lack of interest has not been from a lack of work, however. Electronic forms are ubiquitous on the Internet-think e-commerce applications, site registration and search forms. Indeed, HTML forms are the de facto standard for interfacing people and processes on the Web, and Internet and intranet applications are replete with HTML forms for both user and administrative interfaces. Moreover, content-management applications especially have relied on HTML forms interfaces. Many Web applications, for example, depend heavily on storing content in relational database tables. HTML forms are a direct and ready means of developing an interface for such tables, so developers have relied on them. But just as people eventually realized that HTML was not a robust markup language that could glue applications together-leading to XML-so too have people realized that HTML forms are not the best method for collecting and validating data and content. Big business? Despite the prevalence of electronic forms, they have not stood out as a big business in and of themselves. While there have been electronic-forms companies-Cardiff, Kofax and others-many of them have not been devoted solely to e-forms technology itself but have instead derived revenue from the scan-and-capture and consulting pieces of the business. As a result, not many analysts have sized the e-forms market, instead rolling it up into bigger IT markets such as Business Process Management and Enterprise Content Management. Nonetheless, a great deal of attention is now being paid to e-forms because of recent product announcements from Adobe and Microsoft, along with the publication of the XForms recommendation by the World Wide Web Consortium. Adobe targets the enterprise Adobe has long been interested in electronic forms, of course. Acrobat is a popular tool for creating and distributing forms. Over the past few years, Adobe has added significantly more forms-related features to Acrobat, beginning with version 4 and continuing though 6. Acrobat 4 included a format for creating forms in Acrobat: Forms Data Format, or FDF. Like PDF, FDF was an all-ASCII format that could be extended with a software development kit. But FDF emerged just as the market was demanding XML for such data structures, so Acrobat 5 included XFDF, an XML-based forms language. The drawback to XFDF was that it prescribed a single set of XML tags; Acrobat 6 now allows forms designers to use any arbitrary schema. More significant, though, is Adobe's acquisition in early 2002 of enterprise-forms vendor Accelio, as part of Adobe's ongoing effort to market a wider range of enterprise products. Conventional wisdom about Adobe suggests that, while the mainstay product lines of Illustrator and Photoshop are healthy, they are mature and will not grow as quickly as they have in the past. Adobe, therefore, needs to compete more aggressively in the enterprise software space, and e-forms provide Adobe an opportunity to sell more enterprise platforms such as Adobe Form Server and the Adobe Document Server. To that end, Adobe is revamping the e-forms designer product that it acquired as part of its Accelio purchase. Adobe Form Designer is a distinct product from Acrobat Professional, although either can be used for designing forms. (To confuse things a bit more, the new version of Form Designer, just out in beta, is also going from version 5.0 to 6.0, as Acrobat recently did.) Together with Acrobat, Form Designer gives Adobe powerful tools to help organizations design and deploy forms. Moreover, the clear emphasis of these products is not just to give professionals tools for creating forms that use Acrobat as the display format; rather, Adobe is fully embracing XML as the data-transport mechanism for e-forms. Adobe would argue that this gives the forms designer the best of both worlds: XML for the data structure and PDF for the graphic design. Microsoft counters with InfoPath Microsoft has a counter to this, of course: InfoPath. When Microsoft first began talking about e-forms specifically and "electronic documents" more generically, it called the potential product "XDocs." This raised the question, logically, of whether Microsoft was targeting PDF and hoping to position XDocs as an alternative electronic-document format. XDocs has morphed into InfoPath, but it is clear that Microsoft still has Adobe in mind with this technology. Electronic forms are not a new technology per se for Microsoft. Indeed, desktop applications such as Microsoft Access and Excel provide rich tools for designing forms interfaces, as do its various server products. It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that millions of forms have been designed with Microsoft FrontPage alone. What these products lacked, InfoPath now provides, namely XML as the underlying data structure for all these forms. InfoPath relies squarely on XML, allowing forms to be designed against any XML schema. Indeed, InfoPath is XML-centric in ways that, at first glance, disarm the critic who expects Microsoft to extend a more proprietary solution. Along with being XML-centric, InfoPath also relies heavily on another World Wide Web Consortium technology, XSLT, to provide the rendering. If it had stopped there, Microsoft would have a wholly open solution. However, e-forms often require application logic and validation to be completely useful, and this is where InfoPath relies on the Microsoft-specific technology. InfoPath is a client application and the installation of several components is required both to design and to use InfoPath e-forms. An InfoPath application includes, at minimum, the XML schema, one or more XSLT scripts to render and provide "views" of the XML, and something Microsoft calls a manifest file for containing form customizations. The manifest is a proprietary structure that identifies and lists all of the form elements; it also includes information on toolbars, menus and error messages. InfoPath includes a WYSIWYG design mode to let users design or modify form templates without having to interact with the XML schemas or XSLT scripts. The WYSIWYG tool then generates the necessary XML schema, XSLT files and supporting files such as the manifest. InfoPath also is intended to be easy for the end user. The product literature and example applications emphasize the "rich-client" features such as spelling checking, interactive validation and rich-text formatting. The X(Form) factor In a head-to-head comparison, Adobe would seem to have the advantage today. Acrobat alone seems to give Adobe the ability to offer a more feature-rich and flexible design tool for creating e-forms. Add the separate Form Designer and related server products, and Adobe has a more comprehensive and mature offering. InfoPath, of course, is only at version 1, and in keeping with its approach of gaining a foothold with an early release and then building on functionality in later releases, Microsoft is certain to add to the InfoPath feature set over time. The wildcard in the e-forms battle could well be XForms, the recent recommendation from the W3C. XForms is intended to allow developers to cleanly separate the presentation of the form from the design of the underlying data being captured by the form. Like the approaches from Adobe and Microsoft, it uses XML as the underlying data structure; unlike the other approaches, XForms does not prescribe a specific way that the e-forms need to be displayed. So where InfoPath relies on XSLT and Microsoft widgets, and Adobe relies on PDF, XForms can be rendered with an XML-based rendering language such as XHTML or SVG. It is noteworthy that both Adobe and Microsoft chose to effectively sidestep XForms with their approaches. However, there are a number of e-forms companies that have developed XForms-compliant solutions. Notable among these are Cardiff Software (which was recently acquired by Verity) and Victoria, B.C.-based PureEdge Solutions. Both PureEdge and Cardiff have been attacking the e-forms problem for years, and each has supported and contributed to the XForms authoring process at the W3C. The value proposition of XForms is akin to the value proposition for any standards-based technology: Why invest heavily in a proprietary approach? Such arguments have driven many technology and data structuring choices; thus, the attractiveness of using XML for content storage. Designing an e-form combines a number of talents and aptitudes. Part of the task is understanding the data and content that need to be captured, part of it is designing an attractive form, and part of it is providing sufficient validation and logic so that the e- form is collecting useful and valid XML. So, while XForms may well be the most standards-centric approach, vendors such as Cardiff and PureEdge need to match Adobe and Microsoft in providing e-forms design tools that make it easy to create an effective look and add the appropriate logic and validation. Conclusion Microsoft and Adobe have certainly helped bring new focus and attention to the e-forms marketplace. While the market to date has been small enough for it to escape a great deal of attention, the new product offerings from Microsoft and Adobe-and the new turf staked out by XForms-may well have awoken a sleeping giant. The use of electronic forms is vast, but up until now has been dominated by essentially free technology: HTML forms. Perhaps these new technologies can bring added functionality and improved ease of use to the end user and usher in a new generation of applications that are fueled by greatly improved content and data capture at the front end. TSR

About the Author Bill Trippe is founder of New Millennium Publishing, a Boston-based consulting practice formed in 1997. Trippe has more than 15 years of technical and management experience in electronic publishing, content management, and SGML/XML and related technologies. He is a frequent speaker at industry events and writes for numerous industry publications.

eForms Summit Tuesday, 20/4 Registration is open! Register before 26 March, to Chairperson(s) take advantage of discounted Hans Hartman early registration rates and President save up to €100. Space is Suite 48 limited for this event - The wide variety of electronic form solutions, or register today! eForms, available today range from simple scripts Event Co-Sponsors packaged with mass-market Web publishing software to very specialized industrialstrength applications for forms-intensive industries transitioning from older document management systems. Companies wanting to build and deploy forms applications now use a hodgepodge of technologies, many of which are proprietary and difficult to integrate with other enterprise applications. HTML forms have helped make e-commerce possible, but HTML itself is too limited to go beyond data capture to true data interoperability.

Business process automation enables organizations to lower costs and improve efficiencies by delivering the right data to the right user at the right time. eForms technologies and products will facilitate the seamless In conjuction with interoperation of existing systems, including content management, CRM and EAI applications. The benefits: increased operational efficiency, improved productivity and reduced costs. The result: better business.

The eForms Summit focuses on the three main technologies and products changing the eForms business: W3C’s XForms 1.0 standard, recently released as a recommendation; Microsoft’s InfoPath, part of the new Office 2003 suite with XML-enabled everything; and Adobe’s Form Designer, which combines the interoperability of XML with the presentation qualities of PDF. Get an in-depth overview of each product, as well as case studies and reports from leading analysts about what each technology can—and can’t—do for you. Who Should Reasons to Attend: Attend: Benefit from an unbiased, deep, up- • IT strategists, to-date understanding of eForms managers and staff technologies, vendors, trends and • Content management best practices from the most project managers experienced and respected experts • Content management in the field. Our speakers have system designers implemented every kind of eForms • Intranet, Internet and system across all industries. They extranet portal help you get started, make vendor managers choices, benchmark your progress • Information architects or make strategic decisions. Project and knowledge managers and implementers learn managers from others' experiences while IT • Webmasters, strategists can make informed developers and decisions, especially concerning administrators integration. Business managers • Business, market and understand what can be technology analysts accomplished with eForms • Consultants and technology today and what their integrators competition already might be • Marketing and product deploying executives • Forms designers and implementers Conference Sessions

The State of the eForms Market Speaker Info >> Tuesday, 20/4 9:00am–10:30am Get a great overview of the current state of the eForms market by a leading analyst. This session will provide an analysis of the three leading e-forms technologies and products--the W3C's Xforms 1.0-based products, Microsoft's InfoPath, and Adobe's Form Designer. This session discusses the strengths and weaknesses of each solution and sorts through the confusion that exists about whether they compete with or complement each other. Attend this session and come away with a good, base-level understanding of where the eForms market stands today.

Case Studies Speaker Info >> Tuesday, 20/4 11:00am–12:30pm This session features case studies highlighting the use of each of the three eForms technologies and products (W3C's XForms 1.0- based products, Microsoft's InfoPath, and Adobe's Form Designer) in production environments. We spotlight the most innovative examples we can find- and we're out looking now.

W3C's XForms Unplugged Speaker Info >> Tuesday, 20/4 2:00pm–3:15pm We're all used to HTML forms that capture data that users enter in their Web browsers. XForms lets you capture these data in a more structured fashion and pass them more easily to backend systems. But there's much more. Hear it all first hand from the chair of the W3C XForms Working Group.

Microsoft Office InfoPath Unplugged Speaker Info >> Tuesday, 20/4 3:30pm–4:45pm The Next Frontier for Electronic Forms - Integrated Business Processes

Next generation electronic forms go far beyond just being replacement for paper. As customers increasingly use XML as a standard way to represent data in a vendor agnostic way, forms are being tightly integrated into a vast landscape of business processes. Additional influences include the cross-industry move to Web Services as a means to communicate with an organization's existing data and the development of standard XML schemas in industries like Healthcare, Pharmaceuticals, and Insurance. This session will detail these trends and outline the implications they hold for electronic forms and form creation tools, including the need to accommodate dynamic forms that blur the line between forms and documents and obviate the need to build custom applications.

Adobe's Forms Designer Unplugged Speaker Info >> Tuesday, 20/4 5:00pm–6:15pm Adobe has just unveiled a new version of its Forms Designer product, leveraging all the application's strengths in document creation and processing while embracing XML. Come check it out.

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