Services Necessary for Document Conversion

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Because document conversions can be resource intensive, especially when performed in batches, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 relies on two services to manage document conversions, including load balancing, prioritizing, and scheduling the conversions:

  • DocConversionLoadBalancerService   This service balances the document conversion requests from across the server farm. When it receives a converter request from Office SharePoint Server 2007, the DocConversionLoadBalancerService returns a URI to the appropriate DocConversionLauncherService. Office SharePoint Server 2007 connects to the specified launcher via .NET Remoting and requests it convert the specified document.

  • DocConversionLauncherService   The service schedules and initiates the document conversions. When Office SharePoint Server 2007 passes it a document conversion request, the DocConversionLauncherService persists the original file stream and conversion settings information to disk, and then calls the appropriate document converter using a command line command.

For more information about the command line command to which document converters must respond, see Document Converter Run Command.

The document converter then performs the document conversion. Office SharePoint Server 2007 performs additional post-processing before placing the converted copy in the appropriate document library.

You must enable and configure these two services for your server farm before you can implement document converters.

After you configure these services, you can deploy your custom document converter, and use the Office SharePoint Server 2007 Central Administration interface to configure its settings.

For more information about deploying your custom document converter as a Feature, see Document Converter Deployment.

Document converters are installed at the Web-application level. The document converter then becomes available on each site and document library in the Web application.

See Also

Concepts

Document Converters Overview
Document Converters
Custom Processing of Converted Documents