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HCL Domino Designer XPages User Guide
This guide focuses on the aspects of creating applications using XPages technology.
Designing XPages applications
HCL Domino® Designer provides the means to populate an XPage with controls and other artifacts, and to associate an XPage with data stores.
Binding and submitting data
The data store for XPages is Domino®. You can access the data store through Domino forms and views.

HCL Domino Designer XPages User Guide
This guide focuses on the aspects of creating applications using XPages technology.
- Product overview
  HCL Domino® Designer supports applications development for the HCL Domino platform using XPages, forms, views, and other elements such as controls.
- Tutorials
  This section contains tutorials and information about tutorials.
- Administering applications
  HCL Domino Designer provides features for administering and managing your work and related files while developing your application projects.
- Designing XPages applications
  HCL Domino® Designer provides the means to populate an XPage with controls and other artifacts, and to associate an XPage with data stores.
  - Previewing and running XPages
    XPages run in Domino® server and Notes® client environments. From Domino Designer, you can preview XPages in both environments.
  - Adding controls
    Controls are visual elements such as edit boxes, buttons, images, and text that allow users to manipulate data on an XPage.
  - Adding controls from the XPages Extension Library
    The XPages Extension Library provides additional controls ready to use. The controls include an application layout object, an improved dialog, pickers, in place forms, Dojo components, dynamic content, and much more. The controls support enhancements to the Domino(r)® templates.
  - Binding and submitting data
    The data store for XPages is Domino®. You can access the data store through Domino forms and views.
    - Defining data sources
      An XPage can contain data sources based on Domino® forms and views.
    - Binding data elements
      XPages controls can be bound to elements of data sources.
    - Submitting and retrieving data
      Bound data items can be submitted to their data sources as new and replacement documents.
    - Document encryption and decryption in Domino® using XPages
      Domino® lets documents be encrypted on the web using XPages.
    - Relational Database Management (RDBMS) Support using XPages
      When using XPages with the Relational Database Management Support (RDBMS) feature (found in the Extension Library as a plugin), you can directly connect to any relational database that supports a JDBC driver.
  - Adding images, styles, and themes
    You can enhance your design with images, styles, and themes.
  - Responsive web design support in XPages
    The XPages Extension Library supports Bootstrap, a Responsive Web Design (RWD) framework. This support comes in the form of an XPages Responsive Bootstrap plugin that you can use in your XPages applications.
- Designing composite applications
  You can create composite applications from XPages.
- Programming
  XPages uses JavaScript™ for programming while the forms-based design elements use the formula language, LotusScript®, Java™, and JavaScript.

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.