Easier access to data

While very simple applications can work fine just using the result set client, it is a best practice to organize data into entities with associations. To facilitate this, SimpleFM provides repositories which take care of the internals and let the application developer concentrate on the business domain.

A repository instance is responsible for a single type of entity. It is where you define the infrastructure to insert, update, and delete an entity, as well as giving you multiple ways to query.

The FileMaker XML API exposes data via layouts. We'll come back to this in more detail later, but it's important to know that entities, repositories, and layouts must be created and maintained in concert with each other.