Patent ID: 7752603

Claim:
A system for sharing data element values among software components of a document processing framework that capture, process, and route a digital image of a document, comprising: a first software component of the document processing framework; a second software component of the document processing framework; a configuration file generated for the digital image, the configuration file having at least one data element attribute paired with a runtime replacement tag that the first software component replaces with a value for the data element attribute, wherein the runtime replacement tag comprises: a start tag delimiter, an identifier for the first software component, a tag name, a separator that separates the identifier for the first software component from the tag name, and an end tag delimiter; and a processing device that executes the first software component and the second software component, wherein the processing device is configured to: determine the first software component identified in the runtime replacement tag from the identifier in the runtime replacement tag; execute the first software component on the digital image, wherein executing the first software component on the digital image causes the first software component to produce the value for the data element attribute and replace the runtime replacement tag with the value produced for the data element attribute; terminate the first software component; and execute the second software component on the digital image in response to terminating the first software component, wherein executing the second software component on the digital image causes the second software component to read the value that replaced the runtime replacement tag in the configuration file.