Relation of the document hierarchy to the runtime batch hierarchy

The document hierarchy describes the general structure of the documents that your application supports in terms of document types, page types, and fields. By contrast, a runtime batch describes specific documents that contain specific pages and specific data.

The document hierarchy and the runtime batch can be described in object-oriented terms:

• The document hierarchy defines the document, page, and field classes.
• The runtime batch describes a set of objects that is built from those classes. Each object has a set of variables that is derived from the parent class, and each variable has a value.

While the document hierarchy describes a single, generalized version of each document and page type, a runtime batch can have any number of documents and pages.

In the TravelDocs application, the document hierarchy defines the three document types that include Car_Rental, Hotel, and Flight. The runtime batch might include two car rental documents, two hotel documents, and two flight documents. Each runtime document has one or more pages. Each page has the number of fields that are defined in the document hierarchy for that page type.