Overview of AEM Document Services

Assembler Service

The Assembler service lets you combine, rearrange, and augment PDF and XDP documents and obtain information about PDF documents. Each job submitted to the Assembler service includes a Document Description XML (DDX) document, source documents, and external resources (strings and graphics). The DDX document provides instructions on how to use the source documents to produce a set of resultant documents.

Apart from above mentioned capabilities, the Assembler service:

About DDX

When using the Assembler service, use an XML-based language called Document Description XML (DDX) to describe the output you want. DDX is a declarative markup language whose elements represent building blocks of documents. These building blocks include PDF documents, XDP documents, XDP form fragments, and other elements such as comments, bookmarks, and styled text.

DDX document can specify resultant documents with these characteristics:

You can use DDX to augment PDF documents as part of document assembly or disassembly. You can specify any combination of the following effects:

You can use a simple input map to specify the locations of source and resultant documents. You can also use the following external data URL types:

Doc Assurance Service

The Doc Assurance Service helps you to encrypt and decrypt documents, extend the functionality of Adobe Reader with additional usage rights, and add digital signatures to your documents. Your users can easily interact with PDF forms and documents, while your organization improves security, archiving, and compliance.

The Doc Assurance service contains three services: signature, encryption, and reader extension.

Signature Service

The Signature service lets you work with digital signatures and documents on the AEM server. For example, the Signature service is typically used in the following situations:

The Signature service accesses certificates and credentials that are stored in the trust store.

Encryption Service

The Encryption service enables you to encrypt and decrypt documents. When a document is encrypted, its contents become unreadable. You can encrypt the entire PDF document (including its content, metadata, and attachments), everything other than its metadata, or only the attachments. An authorized user can decrypt the document to obtain access to its contents. If a PDF document is encrypted with a password, the user must specify the open password before the document can be viewed in Adobe Reader or Acrobat. If a PDF document is encrypted with a certificate, the user must decrypt the PDF document with a private key (certificate). The private key used to decrypt the PDF document must correspond to the public key used to encrypt it.

Reader Extension Service

The Reader Extensions service enables your organization to easily share interactive PDF documents by extending the functionality of Adobe Reader with additional usage rights. The Reader Extensions service works with Adobe Reader 7.0 or later. The service adds usage rights to a PDF document. This action activates features that are not usually available when a PDF document is opened using Adobe Reader, such as adding comments to a document, filling forms, and saving the document. Third-party users do not require additional software or plug-ins to work with rights-enabled documents.

When PDF documents have the appropriate usage rights added, recipients can do the following activities from within Adobe Reader:

These special user capabilities are automatically activated when a rights-enabled PDF document is opened within Adobe Reader. When the user has finished working with a rights-enabled document, those functions are again disabled in Adobe Reader. They remain disabled until the user receives another rights-enabled PDF document.

Out of the box, the DocAssurance service is not available for use. To configure the DocAssurance service, see Installing and Configuring Configuring Document Services.