What is PDF
Portable Document Format (PDF)
is an open standard for document exchange. This format was created by Adobe
Systems in 1993. It is used for representing documents which are independent of
application s/w, hardware and operating systems. This format provides a
page-by-page view of documents, exactly as they appear in their printed form,
as well as allowing keyword search.
Java Based PDF frameworks selected for comparison
Following PDF frameworks are considered for comparison:
•
Apache FOP (Formatting Objects Processor)
•
Apache PDFBox
•
iText
•
jPDFWriter
Apache FOP
|
PDFBox
|
iText
|
jPDFWriter
|
|
Create
|
√
|
√
|
√
|
√
|
Update
|
X
|
√
|
√
|
√
|
Merge
|
X
|
√
|
√
|
√
|
Encrypt
|
√
|
√
|
√
|
√
|
Image
|
√
|
√
|
√
|
√
|
JavaScript
|
X
|
√
|
√
|
√
|
Bookmark
|
√
|
√
|
√
|
√
|
HTML to PDF
|
X
|
X
|
X
|
X
|
Performance
The below chart lists the time taken to generate 2000
similar PDFs. The figures below are tentative.
Framework
|
Time (in ms) for generating 2000 similar PDFs*
|
Apache FOP
|
094424
|
Apache PDFBox
|
061781
|
iText
|
015537
|
jPDFWriter
|
123236
|
Note: The performance test is performed on iCore-5 machine
having 4GB RAM. BEA JRockit (R) (build
R26.0.0-189_CR269406-59389-1.5.0_04-20060322-1120-win-ia32, ) with default JVM
settings is used.
CPU & Memory Usage
Apache FOP
Apache PDFBox
iText
jPDFWriter
Average CPU Utilization Comparison
Commercials
Framework
|
Cost
|
Apache FOP
|
Free
|
Apache PDFBox
|
Free
|
iText
|
$2000/Server + 20% annual support (for commercial use)
|
jPDFWriter
|
$350 per license per CPU pair + 22% annual support
|
Note: These are approximate prices may get change in future.
