Microsoft® Office InfoPath™ 2003 Kick Start

The XML DOM in InfoPath

The XML Document Object Model (DOM) models the XML that forms the data source of an InfoPath form template. As the user adds, deletes, or modifies data in a form control, the InfoPath client automatically makes the corresponding modifications to the DOM behind the scenes. When the user elects to save a form, the data contained in the modified in-memory DOM is saved to disk.

The DOM and XPath

The XML DOM has many similarities to the XPath 1.0 data model. Both models represent an XML document as a hierarchy of nodes. In the DOM, an XML document is represented as a Document node. In InfoPath, the main node types that you will spend time with, other than Document, are Element and Attribute.

MSXML allows you to access nodes ...