Binding and submitting data

The data store for XPages is Domino®. You can access the data store through Domino® forms and views.

The Domino® data store contains documents. A document has a universal identifier (UNID) and contains items of data.

If you are working non-programmatically outside XPages:
  • A Domino® form defines documents for both access and display. For document creation, the user opens an empty document based on a form, enters values for fields defined on the form, and saves the document. The Domino® system creates a new document, assigns item values based on the field values entered by the user, assigns a UNID, and assigns other values such as creation and modification dates. For document retrieval, the Domino® system gets a document with a given UNID, fills in its associated form based on the item values, and presents the form to the user.
  • A Domino® view accumulates and presents items from multiple documents as a table. Documents appear as rows, and items appear as column cells. A view provides access to the underlying documents. For example, a user can retrieve a document by double-clicking on its row.
If you are working non-programmatically in XPages, forms and views are used to define data sources but not the display:
  • Forms provide a means for controls that take values (Check Box, Check Box Group, Combo Box, File Download, File Upload, Hidden Input, Rich Text, Edit Box, Multiline Edit Box, List Box, Radio Button, Radio Button Group, Selection Item, Selection Items, and Computed Field) to access an item on a document. For XPages, the appearance of the form does not matter. What matters is the definition of each data field on the form: its name, its type, and whether is accepts multiple values.
  • Views provide a means for View controls to present documents. Here the appearance of the view matters as its columns will transform into the columns of an XPages View control.

You can access the Domino® data store programmatically, completely bypassing the use of forms and views. See Server-side scripting.