Form Runner ~ Terminology

Rationale

This page explains some terms which occur often in the Orbeon Forms documentation.

Form definitions and form data

We make a distinction between:

• Form definitions, for example an "address" form vs. a "claim" form
• Form data, for example a given instance of the "address" form filled out by a particular user. In Form Builder, a form definition is identified by a two-level hierarchy of names:

Application name and form name

• An application name, which could be a company name such as example "orbeon", "acme", or an actual project name such as "mercury", "foobar", etc.
• A form name, which is local to an application name, for example "address" or "claim". This two-level hierarchy allows for easy grouping of forms, and allows using a single instance of Form Builder to host distinct applications.

Form data is identified by a three-level hierarchy which includes:

• the application name/form name couple that identifies the form definition
• plus a unique form data id or document id provided by Form Runner for each instance of form data