The OsidForm is the vehicle used to create and update objects. The form is a container for data to be sent to an update or create method of a session. Applications should persist their own data until a form is successfully submitted in an update or create transaction.

The form may provide some feedback as to the validity of certain data updates before the update transaction is issued to the correspodning session but a successful modification of the form is not a guarantee of success for the update transaction. A consumer may elect to perform all updates within a single update transaction or break up a large update intio smaller units. The tradeoff is the granularity of error feedback vs. the performance gain of a single transaction.

OsidForms are Identifiable. The Id of the OsidForm is used to uniquely identify the update or create transaction and not that of the object being updated. Currently, it is not necessary to have these Ids persisted.

As with all aspects of the OSIDs, nulls cannot be used. Methods to clear values are also defined in the form.

A new OsidForm should be acquired for each transaction upon an OsidObject. Forms should not be reused from one object to another even if the supplied data is the same as the forms may encapsulate data specific to the object requested. Example of changing a display name and a color defined in a color interface extension:

                     
                     
                     ObjectForm form = session.getObjectFormForUpdate(objectId);
                     form.setDisplayName("new name");
                     ColorForm recordForm = form.getFormRecord(colorRecordType);
                     recordForm.setColor("green");
                     session.updateObject(objectId, form);