Forms and views

In Domino®, a form defines how documents are displayed to the user and how the form's data items are stored. A view reports documents in columns and rows.

When user open a new document, the form that defines that document is used to render a page on the client UI. When users save the new document, the data from the UI is used to create the document according to the data definitions on the form. Likewise when users open an existing document, the data is rendered on the client UI according to the data definitions on the form.

Typically, each row of a view represents one document. However, it is easy in an XPage application to join more than one view together, therefore each row is a view of more than one document for that row.

Columns can contain data values from the documents or computed information, such as the last modification date of the document. Views can be sorted and categorized to better present the documents. Views can be used as access mechanisms to the data, for example, allowing users to open a document by double-clicking its row in the view.

XPage applications employ both forms and views. You can use forms to connect controls on the page to Domino® data definitions. First associate the page with a form. Then bind data input controls on the page to fields on the form. Domino® views can be incorporated into XPages View controls.