Partitioning VDP

To activate this option, select the parameter field Divide Parameters > Create > Single File Part in the Variable Data Printing node. This will reveal two extra parameter fields:

• Divide Document Into Parts: here you can define the number of parts the job will be divided.
• Select part index to output: here you can select which part of the divided parts the node will use. The range is from 0 to the number of parts-1. The node will then execute only one part. For example, if you want to output 1.000 items and divide the output to 4 parts, set the parts index to 2. In that case, the node will output a PDF that contains items from 500 to 750. With this setting, you each of the parts of 0-250, 250-500, 500-750 and 750-1000 are generated with separate workers, which will result in 4 PDF documents. Once the PDF files are generated, use the Join Pages node to generate a single PDF.

Example workflow:

The workflow is creating VDP output from a 1up file, creates the repetition page using Tabular Step and Repeat and splits the work into multiple parts.

The Repeat node is a simple counter:

The repetition is configured with the variable numOfParts, which is a value entered by user. The Repeat node creates multiple workables, so the node Variable Data Printing node is executed in parallel, subject to a number of licensed PACKZFLOW workers.

The Divide Parameters section in the Variable Data Printing node is configured the following way:

• Number of Output Items is set to 0, which means that all records from the database will be output.
• Select part index to output is configured with a subsequent part from the Repeat node.

Once all parts are generated, you can use an extra Script node which will put all PDF output files in a correct order. The Script node has the following configuration:

The configuration will create a list of PDF references in the correct order.

Once the right order is generated, the Join Pages node creates a single PDF output.