Another useful free (or paid) application

Monday 14 September 2015 @ 11:36 pm

DocumentBurster is a PDF (or Excel) bursting engine.  It can take any multi-page PDF and burst it into separate files or folders, Email them out or deliver them via FTP.  It also has command line support so it can be scheduled or run from a shortcut.  DocumentBurster does not have an engine to run RPT files so the PDF has to be generated from Crystal, a Crystal viewer or the export tool mentioned in my previous post.  All you have to do is make sure that each page of the PDF has a specially formatted (invisible) field.  This field tells DocumentBurster which pages go together during the burst. Since the only input you need is a PDF you can use DocumentBurster to burst documents generated by any software package, not just Crystal Reports.

Version 6.2 has been released under the AGPL 3.0 license through SourceForge.  That means, among other things, that you can use it for free as long as you don’t expect to receive support from the developer.  Version 6.3.3 can be purchased from the vendor for $595 which entitles you to one year of support and updates.  The web site also lists a free trial option that is good for 25 downloads, but some will probably use the SourceForge edition for their trial.

I have not used it yet but would be very interested in hearing from someone who has. The complete User Guide is also online.








2 Responses to 'Another useful free (or paid) application'

  1. MHurwood - September 24th, 2015 at 8:48 pm

    “Version 6.2 has been released under the AGPL 3.0 license through SourceForge. That means, among other things, that you can use it for free as long as you don’t expect to receive support from the developer.”

    Are you sure it means that? On my reading of it you can use it for free *in your own Open Source project* (so as part of an Open Source CRM system, for example) but if you’re just a company who wants to use it “burst” your PDFs then you have to buy a commercial license or be eligible for the educational/not-for-profit free license.

  2. Ken Hamady - September 24th, 2015 at 10:03 pm

    Good question. I had to look that up myself. The actual license takes precedence over everything written by anyone else. I am not a lawyer, but if you read the “Basic Permissions” section of the AGPL 3.0 license it says:

    “You may make, run and propagate covered works that you do not convey, without conditions so long as your license otherwise remains in force”

    The definition of a “covered work” includes the unmodified program, and I don’t see any way for an end user to have his license terminated, so it boils down to “you can run the program without conditions”. That is the point of open-source software.

    Last, I asked the developer to read the post and let me know if anything was inaccurate. He thanked me for the post and did not offer any corrections.


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