Most of the database publishing that is done with DMP FLO Suite is done based on templates. A prepress department sets up rules in an InDesign document, and our implementation on top of InDesign Server executes these rules and creates InDesign packages or PDF files as output. All of it without any programming or scripting. But in some cases, the logic is just too customer-specific. And as usual, the FLO Suite still allows you to handle those cases.
Access to InDesign Server
You can access InDesign Server in the same way we do: through it's scripting interface. More specifically, you can write VB.NET code to work with the COM model of InDesign. But when you do, almost all of the householding has already been done. The document is open. It is running in just one of several instances of InDesign. A lot of the template might even already be populated. So you write the minimum of code required to meet your specific requirements.
Helper functions
On top of the standard InDesign Server ActiveX object model, you also have access to our own scripting library. The functions we ourselves use to open document, create packages, exports, place images, place other InDesign files, and so on. All of this results in even faster development of your customized database publishing workflows.
But while it's important to know that you CAN script InDesign Server if you need to, you should also be aware that it is exceptional. The vast majority of output can be created using standard templates. Scripting is used in limited cases mostly to apply some custom formatting (or copy fitting), or to apply a logic to full document creation.