In the next days I'll try to point out some of the extras which are installed with LC ES, but also very well hidden.
Forms-IVS is a sample application that lets you verify that LiveCycle Forms is properly deployed and running. Forms-IVS provides an example of the actions you can do with LiveCycle Forms. So you can test form templates, build using LC Designer, using the LC Forms engine.
Through a web user interface you can select your template and generate a PDF, HTML, form guide ... and pre-fill the form with your xml data. You can even select how the LC Forms Service is being invoked, through EJB or SOAP.
Certainly when developing Form Guides it's more interesting to test your forms on the server, as you'll see the PDF integration working.
Default it will give you a list of sample XDP files, but you can add your own XDP templates and XML files.
Default it is NOT deployed to your J2EE server, so you would have to deploy it yourself. You can find the Forms-IVS ear file in the Adobe install directory. Default location would be :
C:\Adobe\LiveCycle8\deploy\adobe-forms-ivs-jboss.ear
For Jboss you just have to copy this file and drop it into the deploy folder and access it through http://localhost:8080/Forms-IVS
http://localhost:8080/FormsIVS/
not http://localhost:8080/Forms-IVS/