Chapter 4, Exchanging Data Between an External Application
and a Basic XFA Form
XFA Specification
Form Processing
185
Remerge consists of deleting the contents of the Form DOM and performing a complete data binding
operation from beginning to end. This is drastic and may be slow.
Incremental merge consists of applying the data binding process to a subset of the Data DOM and a
subset of the existing Form DOM. In this case, the algorithm, apart from the initial conditions, is almost the
same as for an ordinary merge. Processing starts with a particular pair of nodes, one form node and one
data node, and operates only on the subtrees below those nodes. Within these subtrees, form and data
nodes which are already bound are simply ignored. Otherwise the processing is just as described above for
an ordinary merge. Incremental merge is often used after the Data DOM has been updated, for example
after receiving updated data from a web service.
Form Processing
Form processing is described as part of
“Updating the XML Data DOM for Changes Made to the XFA Data
DOM” on page 137.
Data Output
Data output is described in
“Unload Processing” on page 137.