PDFKeeper

PDFKeeper began as an idea to solve a personal document storage issue. With both digital and paper documents stored in many places, it was becoming a challenge to locate documents quickly, especially at tax time. What proved to be an even bigger challenge was locating a free solution that could store PDF documents in a free, full-text search ready, relational database that could be accessed by anyone on the local area network. In addition, I had a requirement to store notes in the database with the PDF document that would also be searchable.

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In early 2009, after being unsuccessful in locating a solution, I started building PDFKeeper, an open-source application that would use a free, full-text search ready, relational database for PDF document and notes storage, targeted at the Small Office Home Office and Small Business community. To develop the application quickly, I decided to build it with Open Object REXX, a scripting language with GUI support that I was very familiar with from my OS/2 days. As for the database, I chose to use Oracle® Database XE since it was free and was capable of indexing PDF documents; but, it was my plan to expand database compatibility to other platforms over time.

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Here are some development milestones by year: (for more details, please see the Changelog)

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2009

The first version of PDFKeeper is released to the public on Google Code.

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2010

PDFKeeper receives free testing services from nResult, a software testing company that was providing free software testing services to open-source projects; PDFKeeper is redesigned and rewritten as a WinForms application in VB.NET for .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 using SharpDevelop.

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2013

PDFKeeper moves to CodePlex; .NET Framework 4.0 is targeted; All documentation is replaced by new Help system; Installer is migrated from InnoSetup to Windows Installer using WiX Toolset.

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2016

PDFKeeper moves to GitHub; Solution is migrated to Visual Studio 2013; ​.NET Framework 4.6.1 is targeted.

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2017

Source code, user interface, help file, and installer are completely redesigned and rewritten; installation is now per-user.

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2018

PDFKeeper Homepage is now online; the redesigned PDFKeeper is released with additional search capabilities; Oracle® Database compatibility is expanded to 18c, 12c, and 11g Release 2.

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2019

PDFKeeper logo is redesigned; 10th year anniversary edition is released; Category and flag features are added; Oracle® Database compatibility is expanded to 19c and 18c XE.

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2020

Solution is upgraded to Visual Studio 2019; .NET Framework 4.8 is targeted; 32-bit support is discontinued; User interface is redesigned to improve document searching; Source code goes through an extensive refactoring.

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2021

Integrated, single user database option using SQLite is added; document records can be categorized by Tax Year; text annotations are now indexed; User Interface layout is changed; PDFKeeper is added to the Windows Package Manager manifest repository and can now be installed via winget; text from image-only PDF documents is now extracted using OCR and indexed.

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2022

PDFKeeper source code is rearchitected into separate layers; Windows 10 (64-bit) or higher is now required; Oracle® Database compatibility is expanded to 21c and 21c XE; added Oracle® Cloud Autonomous Database 21c and 19c compatibility; added new features; OCR text extraction is improved.

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2023

Version 9.0.0 was released on November 24, 2023.

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Highlights:

• User interface is being moderately redesigned.

• The entire application is being rearchitected using the Model-View-Presenter-ViewModel pattern for better maintainability.

• All non-UI code is being rewritten in C# and merged into a single library.

• All PDF viewer code is being rewritten in C# and will be in a separate library.

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Future Roadmap

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Version 10.0.0 is planned for late 2024.

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Highlights:

• User interface and all UI code will be migrated to C# to complete the migration from VB.NET.

• Solution will be upgraded to Visual Studio 2022 and .NET 7.

• Installer will be upgraded to WiX Toolset v4.

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To track development progress, please visit the Project board on GitHub.

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Thank you for reading!

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Robert F. Frasca

Project Owner and Maintainer

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If you wish to support PDFKeeper, please consider a donation to the project using PayPal, Debit, or Credit Card.

PDFKeeper is a volunteer software project that includes expenses paid out of pocket. Your donation will help pay those expenses and support future development.