Backend Technologies
The development of XPages applications is done using IBM Lotus Domino Designer. With Designer many key scenarios can be implemented declaratively and rapidly, for example to render a list of entries from a database. Additionally for the business logic both JavaScript and Java code can be written. XPages base internally on JavaServer Faces, but the sources of a XPages pages are an XML derivat called XSP which is translated into Java code when running the applications. At runtime, this code returns the HTML to various clients.
In order to access data, XPages and Domino Designer use data sources. These data sources can be bound graphically to UI controls on pages. UI controls and other types of controls show up in a palette of controls in Domino Designer and can be dragged and dropped onto pages. Domino Designer also comes with further convenience functionality, such as field validations and translations. XPages functionality can be modularized in Custom Controls which are XPages controls that can be reused in multiple XPages pages and parametrized based on context.
In order to write business backend code Serverside JavaScript is used primarily. There are APIs to access the document oriented database and the XPages context. Since XPages are based on JSF and JSF is a Java standard it is also possible to invoke standard Java SDK code from the JavaScript code and to write custom Java code using JSF managed beans.
The XPages runtime can be extended using the Extensibility API which is based on JavaServer Faces. This capability can for example be used by ISVs who want to provide their own libraries of XPages controls.
Read more about this topic: Xpages