One of the guiding principles with WebCenter Content has been to make it as easy as possible to consume content. And part of that means viewing content in a format that is optimal for the end user… regardless of the format the content was created in. So WebCenter Content has a long history of converting files from one format to another. Often this involves converting a proprietary desktop publishing format to something more open that can be viewed directly from a browser. Or taking a high resolution image and creating a rendition that download quickly over a slow network.
Over the life of the product, the types and methods for those conversions has grown to provide a broad range of options. It’s sometimes confusing to know what conversion are available and where exactly they are done (Content Server or Inbound Refinery), so I've put together a flowchart and list describing all of the different types of conversion, how and where they are done, and the pros and cons of each. This list covers what’s available as of the current release – WebCenter Content 11g PS5.