3.2 Key Concepts

Before diving into the XML structure, here’s a quick glossary:

• Application: The top-level menu item for your application within the Dashboard.

• Routes: Menu entries (and sub-menu entries) that link to specific pages.

• Canvases: Pages or views that appear when a user clicks a given route.

• Controls: Individual UI components displayed within a canvas (e.g., a data table, a chart, a statistics widget).

• Datasets: Logical sets of data that controls rely on. A dataset may gather data from one or multiple Resources.

• Resources: The underlying data sources (e.g., database tables or external services).

• Fields: Definitions of columns/fields for resources inside a dataset (including nesting and aggregations).

All these elements are defined in your XML <dashboard:section> … </dashboard:section> block. The Dashboard code uses these definitions to create and store the needed entities and relationships in the system.