Submission

The submission part of the backplane allows data to be serialised for transmission to a wide range of end-points. Data can also be retrieved from different locations, and notifications are available to indicate progress.

Submission behaviour differs from the way it works in XForms in that the target for document retrieval is a DOM element. The most common use case would be an instance element, but it may also be a part of a document that contains SVG, XForms, MathML, XHTML, or whatever. (This would allow a server to send back portlets, for example.)

Another major difference will be the way that serialisation works; the data source can be used to create header information as well as name/value pairs.

To give an example, a full HTTP request requires the HTTP method, header information, and the body of data to be transmitted. XForms allows the method to be specified at a high level of abstraction, and then the body to be obtained from serialisation--however, Submission should allow the entire package to be obtained from serialisation.

Finally, Submission should also be able to cope with any level of XML, from full documents to nodesets, to simple text.