Hi fellow monks! I'm not sure if my solution is going to be answered with perl or some other option, but I need some brainstorming help.

BACKGROUND: I have a CGI::Application intranet site on a Linux/apache server with sql2012 backend using filestream to store/organize our internal pdf forms. Forms are updated and maintained by a small group of end users. They use Adobe products (primarily LiveCycle) to edit the forms individually and upload to the sql db through a web interface I've created. This has been a pet project of mine for years to eliminate all the paper forms (*shudder*) and slowly transition to purely electronic form processing (*insert evil laugh here*).

Now I need to add the next and last step of the system to handle the submission and document tracking portion. Currently, they are placing the documents into a network share location and moving the pdfs to folders according to the next step of the process.

Handling the document tracking is fairly straight-forward with a datestamp field in the db for each step in the process. However, does anyone have suggestions on how the end-user is to submit the completed pdf form with a unique identifier field (to identify the specific form)? I don't want to depend on anyone to manually create a unique identifier field within the pdf document or any scripting whatsoever. Is there a module out there to add a unique identifier field and/or submit button and scripting to a pdf document when my form administrators upload an updated/empty form? I played a bit with an html form and embedding the form within the page using frames, but is there a way to essentially grab the filled out pdf with the form submission? I like the idea of the html form/pdf submission combo because I can grab the username from the session (no I don't even trust them to submit their name manually). Of course any pdf modules will need to be able use the submitted bitstream instead of a saved file. Ideally, I'd like to parse the pdf form fields and store the individual field values in order to store the form versions instead the document as a whole. Unfortunately, I only know enough about pdfs to be dangerous.

Does anyone have any ideas?

CLARIFICATION: Apparently, I'm not explaining myself well. I need to figure out how the user is to submit the completed pdf form including the unique id. I already have an id for each form stored in the db. I just can't figure out how to send the id back to the system so it knows which form it is.

In reply to Design brainstorming by ksublondie

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