20.1 Distribution Overview

Although distribution XML files are not required for specifying the distribution of report output, they are useful for complex distributions. For example, there may be times when you want to publish the output of one report in a variety of ways. You might want to send an executive summary of a report to senior management while e-mailing detailed breakdowns to individual managers. In this case, you might produce a single report with two report sections: a portrait-sized summary section and a landscape-sized detail section. You would associate the detail section with a data model group that lists the managers, then alter the destination to burst the report on each instance of the group to send each department's output to its related manager.

The distribution XML file simplifies distribution complexity by enabling you to define multiple outputs for a given report in one XML file, then call that file from a command line or URL.

In order to use the same report definition file to burst and distribute to data-driven formats such as XML and DELIMITEDDATA, as well as to layout-driven formats such as PDF and ENHANCEDSPREADSHEET, you must ensure the following requirements are met:

• The distribution XML file must specify the include element. For example:

  <include src="mainSection"/>
  

• The Repeat On property must be set appropriately for the section(s) specified in the distribution XML file.

• The section(s) specified in the distribution XML file in the report paper layout must not be empty.