Mechanism for Synchronizing Documents for Multi-Print Processing
A printing system is disclosed. The printing system includes a first printer to print a first type of data to a medium and to print machine readable data on the medium including a unique identifier (ID), a database to store variable data information associated with the ID and a second printer to read the barcode to acquire the ID, retrieve the variable data from the database using the ID and print the variable data to the medium.
1 . A printing system comprising:
a first printer to print a first type of data to a medium and to print machine readable data on the medium including a unique identifier (ID);
a database to store variable data information associated with the ID; and
a second printer to read the machine readable data to acquire the ID, retrieve the variable data from the database using the ID and print the variable data to the medium.
2 . The printing system of claim 1 wherein the database is transferred from the first printer to the second printer after the medium is processed at the first printer.
3 . The printing system of claim 1 wherein a local copy of the variable data is stored in memory at the second printer after being retrieved from the database.
4 . The printing system of claim 3 wherein the local copy of the variable data is preprocessed at the second printer.
5 . The printing system of claim 1 wherein the database includes an entry indicating whether the medium was successfully processed at the first printer and the second printer.
6 . The printing system of claim 1 wherein the second printer includes a discard bin to identify the document as being invalid due to improper processing at the first printer or the second printer.
7 . The printing system of claim 1 wherein the ID includes a serial number of the first printer, a date/time stamp and an incremented number.
8 . The printing system of claim 1 wherein the first type of data comprises at least one of text data and image data.
9 . A method comprising:
generating a unique ID for a document at a first printer;
printing a first type of data on the document;
printing the ID on the document as machine readable data;
saving variable data to be printed at a second printer in a database using the ID;
reading the machine readable data at the second printer to acquire the ID;
retrieving the variable data associated with the ID from the database by using the ID as an index; and
printing the variable data on the document at the second printer.
10 . The method of claim 9 further comprising transferring the database from the first printer to the second printer after the document is processed at the first printer.
11 . The method of claim 9 further comprising storing a local copy of the variable data in memory at the second printer after the variable data is retrieved from the database.
12 . The method of claim 11 further comprising preprocessing the local copy of the variable data at the second printer.
13 . The method of claim 9 further comprising identifying the document in the database as being successfully processed at the first printer and the second printer
14 . The method of claim 13 further routing the document to a discard bin at the second printer if the document is invalid due to improper processing at the first printer or the second printer.
15 . A printer comprising:
a first print head to print a first type of data to a medium and to print machine readable data on the medium including a unique identifier (ID);
a database to store variable data information associated with the ID;
a control unit to read the machine readable data to acquire the ID and retrieve the variable data from the database using the ID; and
a second print head to print the variable data to the medium.
16 . The printer of claim 15 wherein the control unit stores a local copy of the variable data in memory after retrieving variable data from the database.
17 . The printer of claim 16 wherein the control unit preprocesses the local copy of the variable data.
18 . The printer of claim 15 wherein the database includes an entry indicating whether the medium was successfully processed at the first printer and the second printer.
19 . The printer of claim 15 further comprising a discard bin to identify the document as being invalid due to improper processing at the first printer or the second printer.
20 . The printer of claim 15 wherein the first type of data comprises at least one of text data and image data.