Is it possible to pull in PDF files that have already been generated separately and concatenate them?

Has anyone heard of this?

Perhaps I should rephrase...

Let's say I have 2 separate PDF files from another source... NOT WF.

Can Webfocus say.. import files not created by WF and just compound them one after another.

For example:

Report 1 is 2 pages
Report 2 is 3 pages

Compound would be 5 pages... we wouldn't be reading the pdf to determine where to insert the next pdf, we would just have it follow on a new page and such...

If this is impossible, feel free to let me know that as well.

Thanks so much!

A few years ago, I worked on a WebFOCUS application that had the same requirement as you describe.

We used a command-line tool called PDCAT to achieve this and it worked wonderfully.

We would first create our WebFOCUS PDF report (using FILEDEF to have it created in a specific directory) and then use the command-line tool PDCAT to concatenate multiple PDF files together.

Check it out at

http://www.pdf-tools.com/asp/products.asp?pcid=pdcat
http://www.pdf-tools.com/

Cheers,

Francis.

Do you have sample code that I could take a look at? I think I understand what you are saying, but I'm not positive.

Thanks so much,
Stacy

After creating the WebFOCUS report, I would run the following sample code to create the concatenated PDF file.

To figure out what's going on, you would have to read the PDCAT documentation.

-SET &BAT_PATH =
- 'c:\IBI\Apps\pdemo\p7pdf\' ||
- 'r123\A1234\P123456\' || 'bat_commands.bat';
FILEDEF bat_commands DISK &BAT_PATH
-RUN
-WRITE bat_commands NOCLOSE C:
-WRITE bat_commands NOCLOSE ,
- cd c:\IBI\Apps\pdemo\p7pdf\
-WRITE bat_commands NOCLOSE ,
- cd r123\A1234\P123456\
-WRITE bat_commands NOCLOSE c:\IBI\pdcat\pdcat -r ,
- -bglogo P7P915.pdf ,
- -I "Exchange Rates" P7R101.pdf ,
- -I "Summary of Account" P7R102.pdf ,
- -I "Portfolio Valuation Summary" P7R103.pdf ,
- -I "Portfolio Val-Asset Detail" P7R105.pdf
-WRITE bat_commands NOCLOSE c:\IBI\pdcat\pdcat -r ,
- -bglogo c:\IBI\Apps\pdemo\p7pdf\standard\p7p910e.pdf ,
- -c "Global Demo Reports" ,
- -sub "Account No.: 1234" ,
- -I "Title Page" P7P920.pdf ,
- -I "Disclaimer" c:\IBI\Apps\pdemo\p7pdf\standard\p7p900e1.pdf ,
- -I "Table Of Contents" P7P921.pdf ,
- C:\ibi\srv52\home\etc\r123_A1234_P123456.pdf
-WRITE bat_commands NOCLOSE rm temp.pdf
-CLOSE bat_commands

I assume these reports should be located in a specific drive, but what if these PDF reports aren't from WF.

Could they be located in a separate drive that I can get them from?

Yes they can be on a separate drive, as long as they're accessible by the WebFOCUS server (or, I think, the server where PDCAT is installed).

I think you can download an evaluation copy of the softare for free - it will work for a number of times before expiring, you can then download another, until your tests are complete.