Concerning DataModel usage plus overhead?

[Rick Reumann <ri...@gmail.com>]

I haven't really used the DataModel class yet, but as described by Brendan 
in another thread, I have a couple of questions about the concepts behind 
it...

First a simple example...

Want to display on a page a list of employees. User should be able to click 
on employee and brought to an edit page to edit the employee.

My question in a previous thread was how to best accomplish this. I figured 
a simple link passing in an ID would make the most sense, but it seems like 
there was recommendations to use a dataModel. But say my initial ist was...

Fred
John
Billy

Questions:

1) I want to click on one of those names and edit the user. This initial 
collection of employees shouldn't contain the full employee info - its just 
name and ID. It's way too much overhead to pull back the full employee 
information at this stage, so all I have as a name and an ID.

2) Why would I want to really save the state of this tableData in this case 
using t:saveState since I really don't care about this list anymore once the 
name is clicked. I'm going to be brought to a totally new editEmployee 
screen and no longer need this collection around. When I want the updated 
list I should get it from the backend again.

Please someone help me understand how to best accomplish what I want to do. 
It seems like such an easy concept but yet I haven't seen a good explanation 
or an example (granted I don't have the O'Reilly book, from what seems to be 
described I'm not certain that example will be what I want either).

Thanks so much.

-- 
Rick