The object model of Domino is very concise. The definitions of forms, views and other design database elements like replication formulas are stored in documents like all other information. These documents do not differ structurally from "normal" data documents. They simply contain a flag in the document's header, which identifies them as so-called "special documents" or design documents. With VisualAge Smalltalk Domino Connection you can access these special documents with a simple protocol. The following section gives you an overview over design documents and their usage.
There is a set of classes which model the properties of design documents. The design document classes are subclasses of AbtLnNote because all their basic properties can be derived from "regular" documents. In addition to the AbtLnNote protocol the design documents offer a number of specialized methods according to their function in a database