Question : Problem: Best solution to Scan direct into application from Fujitsu Scanner

Hi

Im after some advice on scanning direct into an application. We have an asp.net SQL 2000 based internal system. At the moment we upload PDF's to the cases in our system by using a feature similar to attaching an atachment in hotmail etc but this is time consuming, i would like to have one dedicated scanning machine that runs some kind of front end that lets you scan direct into a case into our system.

I am looking to change this as i have seen an application in another company where they have everyone using an web front end but have 1 scanning machine thats running some kind of VB front end, when they press the scan button on the fujitsu scanner it scans and launches a screen where it askes you to put in the case number from the system and when you have done this it automtically uploads it to the sql database for that case.

Can anyone give me an idea of how best this is done, (im not looking for anything in to much tecnical detail at this stage as im not a developer, i would just like a brief understanding of the best programming languages to use etc ansd any other 3rd party software required other than that of the fujitsu software for when i have the discussion with the technical team about it)

Many Thanks

Nick

Answer : Problem: Best solution to Scan direct into application from Fujitsu Scanner

Hi,

usually you can "bind" a button on a scanner to launch an external application (sometimes even the scanner software does the scanning and only sends the resulting image to this external application) from which you can scan the image.

In most cases (with modern scanners), there are two ways to scan something - either via WIA (Windows Image Acquisition) which is a Windows service you can interact with within your own application and do all the scanning, or via TWAIN (which uses the provided scanner software to scan and only returns the result). I think WIA (if you don't have very old scanner which doesn't support it) is the right way to go.

As for the programming language/environment, I would suggest using .NET Framework 2.0 and developing in either C# or VB.NET language. The code to scan an image using WIA can be as short as few lines of code and .NET makes it very easy to both upload/copy the image to the server and insert necessary values to the SQL database.

Regards,
Darko