Domino document structure
You can consider a Domino document (AbtLnNote) to be essentially a dictionary of typed fields (see section on fields and AbtLnItem). That implies that you can add or remove named fields to a document, which means a document does not have a fixed structure.
Note:
Domino documents are displayed and edited using a mechanism called a form. A form is a window to be displayed on the Notes client, which has a number of typed entry fields. Usually there is a close correspondence between the entry fields of a form (also known as form fields) and the fields in a document (also known as items), but as the structure of a document is not fixed, there might be documents having more or other fields than defined in a particular form.
A document can exist, like a database, in an "open" and a "closed" state. (No read or update operation can be performed on closed documents).
The VA Smalltalk Domino Connection transparently manages the state of a document. As a programmer you do not have to worry if a document is open or not. Use the public protocols to access document contents, and all state handling will be done automatically.
There are methods to explicitly open and close documents for any reason you might have. However, the more open documents you have, the more memory you consume.
Note:
It is important to understand that an AbtLnNote is always an "In Memory Copy" of a document. When you load an AbtLnNote, the contents at the time of load is relevant. Once the document loads, changes to the document on the hard disk of your system are not automatically passed on to your copy in main memory. A replication or save conflict can arise when you save a modified AbtLnNote; this conflict must be resolved with the usual mechanisms provided by Domino (that is manually or by a special agent). This non-transaction oriented behavior conforms with the Domino database philosophy.
In addition to the item Dictionary, there is more information stored in the note's note header. The header information is usually not directly available from the client software. However, you can read and modify this information using the Domino Connection.
Last modified date: 01/29/2015