Glossary

The spooled file itself contains all the information that i‑effect^® requires, in order to convert the spooled file to a PDF that looks exactly like the paper document.

When converting a spooled file into other file formats, especially Excel and XML, the appearance of the document is less important than its semantic content, its information or its structure. Unfortunately, spooled files usually have either very little or no metadata at all, so as a consequence they can´t help i‑effect^® with conversion.

By using *SPOOLMAPS you can now reliably manage this information in order to create the best Excel output and usable XML files. Report definitions and report mappings are created to accomplish this.

A report definition defines the structure and contents of a spooled file.

It describes the various elements of a report:

• Report lines specify the various lines that occur in a report
• Report items specify the location and format of data items
• Report sections specify the relationship between the various report lines

A report mapping defines the structure and content of a stream file produced by i‑effect^® and maps the items defined in a report definition to their desired place in the file.

There are currently two types of report mapping:

• Report-to-Excel mappings describe Excel output
• Report-to-Excel mappings describe XML output