A bit of a history lesson

Data binding is nothing new. In many ways, it has been around in computing for decades; a simple example is that of mail merge. Here, you have a master document with a number of parameter fields inserted and a data file with matching fields. The software would take the master file as the template and sequentially read through the data file, insert the matched fields, and generate a new document (which could either be saved or disposed of) containing the newly created documents.

The issue here is that if you make a mistake on the master document, each newly created document will have the same error, and if you need to add more names to the data file, you will either have to create all the letters again or tell the software to use a third data file and then generate the letters that way, but then remember to merge the two data files together to cut down on the time required later on.

As time moved on, so did software; data binding moved to desktop applications. It may...