XML Access Reports

This content is no longer actively maintained. It is provided as is, for anyone who may still be using these technologies, with no warranties or claims of accuracy with regard to the most recent product version or service release.

ReportML is a language that describes Microsoft® Access objects in XML. The ReportML language is made up of a set of tags that describes a form or report's properties, events, and attributes.

Any XML document produced by Access is, at a minimum, well-formed — which means it conforms to the basic rules of XML. That is:

• Each XML document must have a unique root element (an element encompassing the entire document).

• All start and end tags match. XML tags are case-sensitive.

• For each start tag, there is a corresponding end tag. Empty elements can be denoted by a special shorthand tag. Again, XML tags are case-sensitive.

  Note   Access ReportML will not write out any empty tags.

• Elements do not overlap. In other words, start and end tags must be nested properly within other elements.

• Certain reserve characters are part of the XML syntax and will not be interpreted correctly if used in the data portion of an element. You must substitute a special character sequence (called an entity by XML) as follows:

  • <   &lt;
  • &   &amp;
  • >   &gt;
  • "   &quot;
  • '   &apos;

If a properly formatted schema is specified while exporting from Access, then the XML documents created are considered valid XML document. This means, in addition to being well-formed, the documents conform to a defined schema.

See Also

Working with XML | XML Data Import | XML Data Export | Office Applications and XML | XSL: Technology Backgrounder | Working with XML in the Design Environment | Developing Office Developer Applications