To transform a document in a content pipeline, an ACL routine must create the pipeline, set up an array of parameters for the pipeline, and then execute the pipeline on a document. The behavior of a content pipeline is controlled by the parameter array. ACL supports associative arrays in which each entry has a string name and a string value.

To run a content pipeline, an ACL routine must create an empty array and add one entry for each parameter described as required by the Parameter element (in the Interface section of the .ccf file. The name of the array entry must match the name attribute of the Parameter element. The corresponding value must be compatible with the filter's type attribute. Optional parameters may be specified or omitted.

The pipeline will ignore any parameters in the array that are not defined in the Interface element section of the .ccf file. Be aware that parameter names are case sensitive, and most names use the mixed case convention made popular by Java and similar languages.

A pipeline can only transform an input XML document to another XML document. That means that a content pipeline by itself can not transform an XML document to another output type, such as PostScript, PDF, or RTF. To perform transformations from XML to another format, the document must be passed to a content compiler, as described in Content Compilers.