PDFlib Personalization Server enhances the PDF concept beyond static production of PDF documents. "Blocks" is a feature new to PDF – introduced by PDFlib in order to ease and speed up server based variable data printing. With the new introduced concept of "PDFlib Blocks", PDFlib offers a solution to the problem of server side personalization of PDF documents.

The "PDFlib Personalization Server" is based on a two parts concept:

The "PDFlib Block Plugin for Acrobat" is an interactive tool that enables the designer to define areas (PDFlib blocks) with given properties on top of existing PDF data. PDFlib blocks act as precisely defined containers to be filled with text, images or PDF data in a subsequent server side process.

The block processing features as part of the PDFlib Personalization Server enable the programmer to connect the information contained in PDFlib blocks on imported PDF pages with dynamic information, e.g., database fields. The programmer doesn't need to know any details about a block and is therefore independent from any layout changes. PDFlib will take care of all block-related details based on the block properties found in the file.

An excerpt from the PDFlib Reference Manual explains the PDFlib Personalization Server and the PDFlib Block Plugin in detail.

The PDFlib Personalization Server is the most elaborate of the PDFlib product bundle and is based on PDFlib+PDI.

Form or PDFlib Blocks?

The primary distinction is that PDF form fields are optimized for interactive filling, and PDFlib blocks are targeted at automated filling. Applications which need both interactive and automated filling can easily achieve this by using a feature which automatically converts form fields to blocks. Although there are many parallels between both concepts, PDFlib blocks offer several advantages over PDF form fields. See the overview in this table: