Resources, resources instances, and resource collections

A resource is a Java™ class that defines the properties of a user or content object. In database terms, it is analogous to the database schema that defines the column names and types for a database table.

A resource instance is an instance of the resource class. Again, using a database analogy, the resource instance is similar to a row of a database because it contains actual values for each property defined by the resource.

A resource collection is a collection of resource instances, and is similar to a database table (with a fixed schema and a number of rows).

While resources, resource instances, and resource collections are easily mapped to familiar database concepts, it is important to note that the actual content store they wrapper does not have to be a database table. It can be a file system, an LDAP repository, an XML store, or virtually any content store accessible by Java.


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