Introduction
Autobahn DX 6.0 was released in November 2022. Autobahn DX is one of Aquaforest’s flagship products and has been a cornerstone of the large volume Optical Character Recognition (OCR) market for 15 years.
Autobahn DX is a No Code/Low Code solution that provides a set of steps that can be combined into jobs that can be scheduled or run manually. With an extensive range of step types, Autobahn DX jobs can handle a wide range of document workflows.
The documents can originate from:
- File system
- Azure blob storage
- Microsoft SharePoint
- Microsoft Teams
- Microsoft OneDrive
After processing the results can be saved back to:
- File system
- Azure blob storage
- Microsoft SharePoint
- Microsoft Teams
- Microsoft OneDrive
This release of Autobahn DX now features job steps that utilize the ORPALIS GdPicture engine. These steps enhance the flexibility and power of Autobahn DX.
ORPALIS GDPicture engine
On the 16 February 2021, ORPALIS, a market-leading provider of PDF and document imaging components for software developers, announced the acquisition of Aquaforest. This gave the development team at Aquaforest inside access to Orpalis’ Enterprise-grade intelligent PDF and document processing SDK.
With more than 15 years of continuous research and innovation, GdPicture has become the most comprehensive SDK for PDF, OCR, barcode, document imaging, and formats.
The GDPicture engine provides Autobahn DX with highly sophisticated steps using state-of-the-art artificial intelligence, machine learning, and fuzzy logic algorithms.
One of the key improvements is that the GDPicture engine can remove the requirement for expensive Microsoft Office licenses for jobs involving the conversion of Office document to PDF conversions.
Autobahn DX 6 begins the roll out of job steps using the GdPicture engine, a process that will continue as new features are added. To keep up to date, check out the Release Notes.
New Steps
Validate PDFA
This step ensures that files in a directory fit all the requirements of the selected PDF/A version:
- If a file is in valid PDF/A format for the selected version, it will be copied to the output folder
- If the file does not fit the selected format, the file will go the selected error folder for the job
Linearize PDF
This step optimizes PDFs by enabling Fast Web View mode for web-viewing, allowing the document to be rendered one page at a time. This enhances the user experience when viewing larger PDFs on the web.
Convert Any File To PDF (GdPicture)
This step allows users to convert a large variety of file types to PDF. This step does not require an Office installation to process Office files.
Combine Any File To PDF
This step merges a batch of files into an output PDF file. The input files can be a variety of file types and are first converted to PDF format before the merge. This step does not require an Office installation to process Office files.
Combine PDFs
This step merges a batch of PDF files together to create a single output PDF file.
PDF To JPEG/PNG
These two steps convert an input PDF page by page into set of JPEG/PNG files.
A unique number starting at 1, zero padded to n digits is used for each output JPEG/PNG file from the source PDF file.
PDF To Tiff (GdPicture)
This step converts an input PDF page by page into a multi-page TIFF file.
PDF To Text
This step extracts the searchable text from all or a subset of pages from a PDF file and creates an output text file.
PDF To Searchable PDF (GdPicture)
Carries out OCR on the input PDF using the GdPicture toolkit, creating an invisible searchable text layer over the document.
Create PDF Portfolio
The Create PDF Portfolio step takes a batch of various file types and assembles them into an integrated PDF unit. Each document can be opened and edited independently of other documents in the PDF.
Detect Signatures
Any step that alters a digitally signed PDF will invalidate that PDF’s signature. This step allows signed files to be identified, and either copied or moved to a specified folder so the signature can be preserved.
If the Copy option is selected, the original signed file can also be attached to the copy that is processed. This means that the original is attached to the file that can be subsequently processed.
Steps in development
Autobahn DX Smart Redaction
Manual redaction is time-consuming and error prone. With the help of Autobahn, the process can be automated and sped up.
The new Autobahn DX Smart Redaction step redacts the following information from all supported document formats:
- credit card numbers
- email addresses
- phone numbers
- VAT IDs
- IBANs
- URIs
This step is in the current release but is intended more for proof of concept than production.
Additional information types are being added with each release. Check the Release Notes for the most up to date information.
How to upgrade?
If you have a current subscription license for Autobahn DX or have a current Support and Maintenance Contract (SMC), you can upgrade to version 6.0 by downloading it from our website.
If you do not have SMC, please contact our Sales Team here at Aquaforest to find out the cost for you to upgrade.
Autobahn 6.0 will require a new license key. Please contact our Support Team to get your new key. As our license keys are machine-bound, we will need the NetBIOS name of the server running Autobahn 6.0. If the server name remains unchanged, we will have it on record here.
Upgrade process
Upgrading Autobahn involves the uninstalling of your current installation, downloading version 6.0 from our website and installing the new version.
This process should only take a few minutes.
It is always good practice to take a copy of the ‘jobdef’ and ‘jobstatus’ folders.
When upgrading, Autobahn will keep your job definitions (jobdef) folder with all its job definition xml files.
When Autobahn starts, it checks the version number of each of the step types, and will make required updates to any step. A status bar will show the progress of this process. This only happens the first time the job definition is checked by Autobahn. Once completed, your previous job list will appear in the new version as it was previously.
Updating from older versions (before 5.0) may require either manual opening, editing and saving of the job or recreating the job from new.
On the install server, ADX 6.0 will require .Net Framework 4.7.2 or higher. The Autobahn installer will check this requirement before installation.
It is important that the Autobahn DX Windows Service is configured correctly. Please check out our Autobahn Windows Service Configuration Blog
There is a step-by-step guide to upgrading Autobahn DX Server in this Autobahn Upgrade Blog.
Step properties Search Bar
Some of the available steps in Autobahn have many properties, particularly the ‘Any File to PDF’ steps which have settings for multiple file types. We have now added a search bar above the properties which can be used to jump to a specific property without scrolling.
