I have a customer who had me create report with a complex layout and lots of optional sections. In addition to using the report itself, he wanted to export the report values into a format where they could be read by another program. We decided to use XML so that the program could search for specific field name tags and extract the matching values. When we started testing the program we noticed some discrepancies between the report values and the XML export values. It mainly had to do with variables that were accumulated in the details and then displayed in the group or report footers.

It took over an hour to identify the root of the problem. Even after fixing the problem I couldn’t explain it, so I created a very simple report to test it. It had one group, and the the following two formulas:

//Accum
WhilePrintingRecords;
NumberVar Accum;
Accum := {Customer.Customer ID}

//Display
WhilePrintingRecords;
NumberVar Accum;

I placed the Accum on the details band and hid that section. I placed the Display formula on a group footer. This exported to XML and showed all the Group Footer values correctly.

Then I split the detail band into A and B subsections. Both subsections were still hidden. The preview of the report looked the same, but when I exported to XML all the group footer values in the XML were zero. It didn’t matter if I put the Accum formula in Details A or Details B. Whenever the Details section was both SPLIT and HIDDEN, the Accum formula would increment correctly in preview but NOT for the XML.  If I used “suppress” instead of “hide” the Group Footer values exported correctly to XML. But even though the details did not appear in preview, they would now be included in the XML.

This behavior looks like a bug to me.  That means there may be other situations where variables don’t behave correctly in XML. So, if you are going to use XML exports, and you are using variables in your report, you need to test the output carefully to confirm that the variables export correctly.

Update 6/21/2019: I found a second scenario that generates the same issue. When the section is split and the parent section above the split sections has a conditional suppress formula. This causes the exact same behavior.